After months of attacking New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mandani as a “communist," President Donald Trump now says the Democratic Socialist will be “a really great mayor” for his home city after a closed-door meeting at the White House.
Seated behind his desk in the Oval Office while Mamdani stood next to him during what became a half-hour love-fest between the two men on Friday, Trump told reporters he’d congratulated his hometown’s next chief executive and pledged to help him bring prices down for New Yorkers.
“I think you're going to have, hopefully, a really great mayor — the better he does, the happier I am,” Trump said.
“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.”
For his part, Mamdani described the meeting as “productive” and “focused on a place of shared admiration and love” between him and Trump — New York City — and “the need to deliver affordability to New Yorkers, the eight and a half million people who call our city their home, who are struggling to afford life in the most expensive city in the United States of America.”
“We spoke about rent, we spoke about groceries, we spoke about utilities. We spoke about the different ways in which people are being pushed out. And I appreciated the time with the President. I appreciated the conversation. I look forward to working together to deliver that affordability for New Yorkers,” Mamdani said.
The astonishingly convivial photo opportunity then morphed into a question-and-answer session with White House reporters and select MAGA influencers who were brought into the room to witness the moment, with multiple questioners attempting to bait the men into attacking each other.
Asked about his previous comments calling Mamdani a “communist” — including one posted to Truth Social just one day ago — Trump implied that Mamdani’s views might change in the future and predicted that the youngest mayor-elect in New York history “is going to surprise some conservative people.”
When the mayor-elect was similarly pressed on past comments in which he’d called Trump a “despot,” the president jumped to Mamdani’s defense by telling reporters: “I've been called much worse than a despot, so it's not that insulting.”
And after another reporter pushed Mamdani to say whether he was “affirming” prior comments in which he referred to the president as a “fascist,” Trump came to the rescue once more and implied that he did not have a problem with the attack.
“That’s OK — you can just say ‘yes,’” Trump said.
Trump and Mamdani would continue to take questions for roughly 28 surreal minutes, during which the president repeatedly showed surprising affection for the 34-year-old, marking a complete 180-degree reversal from the vitriol he’d shown towards the soon-to-be former New York State assemblyman dating back to his improbable victory over former governor Andrew Cuomo in the city’s July mayoral Democratic primary.
After Mamdani shocked the nation — and the world — by defeating the three-term ex-governor in what would become the first of two matchups between him and the scion of a storied Empire State political dynasty, Trump seized on the future mayor’s avowed Bernie Sanders-style socialist politics to make him the focus of attacks against both him and the Democratic Party writ large.
He even threatened on multiple occasions to pull federal funds from his birthplace, leading some Republican figures to float outlandish ways of denying him the mayoralty if he won the November general election — with some pushing for federal authorities to strip Mamdani of his naturalized citizenship.
But in a surprising twist of events, Trump announced that he would sit down with the mayor-elect this week, writing in a Truth Social post on Thursday that “Communist Mayor of New York City, Zohran ‘Kwame’ Mamdani” had requested the meeting.
And as they faced the assembled press afterwards, the president appeared genuine in the affable feelings he showed for Mamdani and expressed what seemed like admiration at the throngs of journalists who’d flocked to the White House to cover their sit-down.
“He's different than you know, your average candidate — he came out of nowhere,” Trump said, referring to Mamdani’s shock primary victory four months ago.
“And then, all of a sudden, he wins a primary that nobody expected he was going to win. It's a great, great tribute. It's an amazing thing that he did.”
He acknowledged that there would inevitably be “topics” on which he and Mamdani would have disagreements, but suggested that they would be able to settle those differences “for the good of New York.”
“I don't care about affiliations or parties or anything else. I want to see if this city could be unbelievable. If he could be a spectacular success, I'd be very happy,” he said.
He also told reporters that he’d be “comfortable” living in his hometown under a Mamdani administration despite his past criticisms.
“We agree on a lot more than I would have thought — I want him to do a great job, and we'll help him do a great job,” he said.
After the press conference, Trump wrote on Truth Social that it was a “great honor” to meet Mamdani.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt later told Fox News’ Sean Hannity, “Maybe Mayor Mamdani will go back to New York and maybe he learned a few things from President Trump today.”
Rachel Dobkin contributed to this reporting.
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