- First meeting between 79-year-old Rep, 34-year-old Dem socialist goes well.
- Trump refrains from unpredictable, televised Oval Office exchanges.
- The US president had predicted the meeting would be ‘quite civil’.
US President Donald Trump welcomed New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani to the White House on Friday, hailing Mamdani’s election victory in the first in-person meeting of the political adversaries who have clashed over everything from immigration to economic policy.
A Democratic Socialist and little-known state lawmaker who won New York’s mayoral race earlier this month, Mamdani requested a meeting with Trump to discuss the cost of living and public safety.
After months of trading barbs and insults in the media, the mayor-elect and the president appeared to put aside their differences and quickly got a briefing in the Oval Office, a setting Trump has sometimes used to embarrass heads of state.
“We agreed on a lot more than I thought,” Trump said after inviting reporters into the Oval Office after a private meeting. “We have one thing in common: We want this city of ours that we love to do really well.”
Sitting at his desk, Trump smiled up at Mamdani, standing to the president’s right, and congratulated him on winning the mayoral race earlier this month: “He really ran an incredible race against some very tough people, very smart people.”
“It was a productive meeting focused on a place of shared admiration and love that is New York City and the need to deliver affordability to New Yorkers,” Mamdani said.
Trump said he was happy to put aside partisan differences. “The better he does, the happier I am,” Trump said.
As Mamdani surged in the polls to victory, Trump, a Republican, issued threats to remove federal funding from America’s largest city. The mayor-elect has regularly criticized a number of Trump’s policies, including plans to increase federal immigration enforcement efforts in New York City, where four in 10 residents are foreign-born.
The 79-year-old president, a former resident of New York, has labeled Mamdani, 34, a “radical leftist lunatic,” a communist and a “Jew hater,” without providing evidence for those claims.
Mamdani has advocated Nordic democratic socialism, not communism. While a staunch critic of Israel, he was supported by prominent Jewish politicians, he is bringing Jewish staff into his new administration, notably New York Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch, and has repeatedly denounced anti-Semitism.
Trump tempered his language Friday shortly before the mayor-elect’s arrival, saying he expected it to be “quite civil” and praising Mamdani for a “successful run.”
“I hit him a little hard,” Trump told “The Brian Kilmeade Show” on Fox News. “I think we’ll get along well. Look, we’re looking for the same thing: we want to make New York strong.”
Earlier, Mamdani posted a laughing selfie on social media, taken in the seat of a plane bound for Washington.
Trump’s meetings in the Oval Office have been wildly unpredictable, including respectful meetings with opponents and ambushes from guests such as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and South Africa’s Cyril Ramaphosa.
Mamdani, who will be sworn in as mayor on Jan. 1, said at a news conference the day before the trip to Washington that he had “many disagreements with the president.”
“I intend to make it clear to President Trump that I will work with him on any agenda that benefits New Yorkers,” he told reporters outside New York City Hall. “If an agenda hurts New Yorkers, I’ll be the first to say so, too.”
Trump thinks Mamdani was ‘very nice’ to call him
Ugandan-born Mamdani will be the first Muslim and first South Asian mayor of the city that is home to Wall Street. His energetic, social media-savvy campaign sparked debate about the best path for Democrats. Out of power in Washington and divided ideologically, Democrats are largely united by their opposition to Trump, who is constitutionally barred from seeking another term in 2028.
Mamdani promised to focus on affordability issues, including the cost of housing, groceries, childcare and buses in a city of 8.5 million people. New Yorkers pay nearly double the national average rent.
Inflation has been a big issue for Americans, and it’s one for which they give Trump low marks. Only 26% of Americans say Trump is doing a good job of controlling the cost of living, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll this week.
The U.S. federal government is providing $7.4 billion to New York City in fiscal year 2026, or about 6.4% of the city’s total spending, according to a report by the New York State Comptroller. It was not clear what legal authority Trump could invoke to withhold any funding mandated by Congress.
The two men traded barbs again just hours after Mamdani’s election.
“If anyone can show a nation betrayed by Donald Trump how to defeat him, it’s the city that gave him birth,” Mamdani told cheering supporters in his victory speech, who urged Trump to “turn up the volume.”
Trump said he was puzzled by Mamdani’s speech after excerpts were played for him during the Fox News interview Friday morning.
“I don’t know exactly what he means by ‘turn up the volume.’ He has to be careful when he says that to me,” Trump said. “As you know, he was very nice to call, and we’re going to have a meeting.”
