President Donald Trump said late Wednesday that the long-awaited meeting with New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani would happen in Washington later this week, setting up an in-person clash between the political polar opposites who for months have antagonized each other from afar.
The sit-down, which Trump said on social media would take place Friday in the Oval Office, could possibly represent a detente of sorts between the Republican president and Democratic rising star, as Trump has since Mamdani’s win moved toward acceptance of Mamdani’s central, winning campaign issue of affordability.
Calling Mamdani by his full name — and putting the mayor-elect’s middle name of Kwame in quotation marks — Trump posted Wednesday night that Mamdani had asked for the meeting, promising “Further details to follow!”
Saying it was “customary” for an incoming New York City mayor to meet with the president, spokesperson Dora Pekec said Mamdani planned to discuss with Trump “public safety, economic security and the affordability agenda that over one million New Yorkers voted for just two weeks ago.”
Trump for months has slammed Mamdani, falsely labeling him as a “communist” and predicting the ruin of his hometown if the democratic socialist was elected. He also threatened to deport Mamdani, who was born in Uganda and became a naturalized American citizen in 2018, and to pull federal money from the city.
