The president hosted the mayor-elect at the White House – and seemed enamoured of his fellow New Yorker
The highly anticipated Oval Office meeting between Donald Trump and Zohran Mamdani – the mayor-elect of New York City, the US president’s beloved home town – was hardly the combustible tête-à-tête many had predicted. For the moment at least, the two New Yorkers appeared relaxed, smiling and cautiously optimistic about the work they might accomplish together.
Neither revived their hot campaign trail rhetoric, in which they cast each other as diametrically opposed political adversaries. Trump had labeled Mamdani a “100% Communist Lunatic” and urged voters to back his opponent, the former New York governor Andrew Cuomo. In turn, Mamdani assailed Trump as a “despot” and pledged to be the president’s “worst nightmare”.
The president likes a winner and he loves New York – and both were clear on Friday, when he extolled Mamdani for running an “incredible race” against some “very tough people”.
“We have one thing in common – we want this city of ours that we love to do incredibly well,” Trump said, in his opening remarks to reporters following the meeting with Mamdani.
