Trump told the press he’s ‘very confident that [Mamdani] can do a very good job’ in surprisingly cordial meeting – key US politics stories from 21 November 2025
It’s not as if they were holding hands and skipping down the halls of the White House, but President Trump and New York mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani appeared to get along well in their first meeting.
Trump hosted the 34-year-old Democratic socialist, who defied early expectations to win the city’s Democratic primary, then the mayoral race. And Trump let it be known he was impressed by that, congratulating Mamdani and describing his victory as “an incredible race against smart people”.
“I feel very confident that he can do a very good job,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office as Mamdani stood to his right, offering praise for his ideological opposite. “The better he does, the happier I am. I will say there’s no difference in party. There’s no difference in anything, and we’re going to be helping him to make everybody’s dream come true, having a strong and very safe New York.”
It was a stark change of tune from Trump’s comments during the mayoral election, when he dismissed the candidate from his own party, Curtis Sliwa, as a lightweight and instead endorsing Andrew Cuomo, the independent and former Democratic governor, while branding Mamdani a “little communist”.
