Can Trump strip Musk, Mamdani and others of their US citizenship?
The Take
Al Jazeera
4.7 • 748 Ratings
🗓️ 11 July 2025
⏱️ 23 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
US President Donald Trump is threatening to strip away citizenship from some naturalized citizens, including billionaire Elon Musk and New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani. In a country where more than 25 million people are naturalized citizens, who is really at risk?
In this episode:
- Heba Gowayed (@hebagowayed), professor of sociology, CUNY Hunter College and Graduate Center
Episode credits:
This episode was produced by Tracie Hunte, Tamara Khandaker and Diana Ferrero with Phillip Lanos, Spencer Cline, Kisaa Zehra, Melanie Marich, Sarí el-Khalili, and our host, Manuel Rapalo. It was edited by Kylene Kiang.
Our sound designer is Alex Roldan. Our video editors are Hisham Abu Salah and Mohannad al-Melhem. Alexandra Locke is the Take’s executive producer. Ney Alvarez is Al Jazeera’s head of audio.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Al Jazeera Podcasts. |
| 0:09.7 | Today, U.S. President Donald Trump's plan to revoke citizenship for some Americans. |
| 0:17.0 | A new memo from the Justice Department outlines an aggressive new strategy to actually strip citizenship from naturalized Americans. |
| 0:25.7 | What this could mean for America's 25 million naturalized citizens. |
| 0:32.9 | I'm Manuel Rapalo, and this is The Take. |
| 0:47.8 | My name is Hibah Gawait, and I'm an associate professor of sociology at CUNY Hunter College and Graduate Center. |
| 0:49.9 | Hibba, welcome to the Take. |
| 0:57.0 | So, U.S. President Donald Trump has said that he wants to deport naturalized U.S. citizens. |
| 1:05.0 | This includes his former first buddy, his political ally, Elon Musk, as well as New York City's Democratic mayoral candidate Zoran Mamdani. Your message to communist Zohan Mandami. |
| 1:10.2 | Well, then we'll have to arrest him. |
| 1:12.5 | Look, we don't need a communist in this country, but if we have one, I'm going to be watching |
| 1:16.8 | over him very carefully on behalf of the nation. Yesterday, Donald Trump said that I should be |
| 1:24.1 | arrested. He said that I should be deported. He said that I should be |
| 1:28.7 | denaturalized. Let's start with what denaturalization is and legally can President Trump |
| 1:36.4 | denaturalize Musk and Mamdani. I think the jury is still out on the latter part of that question. |
| 1:42.4 | So to answer sort of the question of what denaturalization is, I think we first have to start with what citizenship is and then what naturalization is. So citizenship is how anybody becomes included in what we imagine to be America, right? It be included in the body politic of this nation. That's what makes voters. That's what makes |
| 2:02.4 | people who, you know, become our elected officials who lead this nation. And so citizenship is very |
| 2:08.8 | much sort of that framework for inclusion. And naturalization in the United States is a very |
| 2:14.1 | important pathway to inclusion. And the reason why it's such an important pathway as |
| 2:19.0 | well is because this country is, you know, is a settler country, right? It is formed based on |
| 2:24.3 | these arrivals to it. And so the first naturalization act in 1790, you know, was limited to |
| 2:31.6 | white persons who had been here for about two years. People, of course, in the process, you know, was limited to white persons who had been here for about two years. |
... |
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