- The first meeting between the 79-year-old representative and the 34-year-old democratic socialist goes well.
- Trump refrains from unpredictable, televised exchanges in the Oval Office.
- The US president had predicted that the meeting would be “pretty civil.”
US President Donald Trump warmly greeted incoming New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani at the White House on Friday, praising Mamdani’s election victory in the first in-person meeting of the political opposites, who have clashed on everything from immigration to economic policy.
Mamdani, a democratic socialist and little-known state lawmaker who won the New York mayoral race earlier this month, asked to sit down with Trump to discuss cost-of-living and public safety issues.
After months of trading barbs and insults in the media, the mayor-elect and the president appeared to put aside their differences and quickly struck up a rapport in the Oval Office, a setting Trump has occasionally used to embarrass heads of state.
“We agreed a lot more than I thought,” Trump said after inviting reporters to the Oval Office following a private meeting. “We have one thing in common: we want this city we love to do very well.”
Sitting at his desk, Trump smiled at Mamdani, who was to the president’s right, and congratulated him on winning the mayoral election earlier this month: “He really ran an incredible race against very tough people, very smart people.”
“It was a productive meeting focused on a place of shared admiration and love, which is New York City, and the need to offer affordability to New Yorkers,” Mamdani said.
Trump said he was happy to put partisan differences aside. “The better I do, the happier I am,” Trump said.
As Mamdani surged toward victory in the polls, Trump, a Republican, threatened to withdraw federal funding from America’s largest city. The mayor-elect has regularly criticized a number of Trump policies, including plans to step up federal immigration enforcement efforts in New York City, where four in 10 residents were foreign-born.
The 79-year-old president, a former New York resident, has called Mamdani, 34, a “radical left-wing lunatic,” a communist and “Jew-hater,” without offering evidence for those claims.
Mamdani has embraced Nordic-style democratic socialism, not communism. While he is a staunch critic of Israel, he has received endorsements from prominent Jewish politicians, is adding Jewish staff to his new administration, notably New York Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch, and has repeatedly condemned anti-Semitism.
Trump toned down his language Friday shortly before the mayor-elect’s arrival, saying he hoped he would be “pretty civil” and praising Mamdani for a “successful candidacy.”
“I was hitting him a little hard,” Trump said on Fox News’ “The Brian Kilmeade Show.” “I think we’ll get along well. Look, we’re looking for the same thing: We want to make New York stronger.”
Earlier, Mamdani posted a smiling 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 encounters with opponents and ambushes of guests such as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and South African Cyril Ramaphosa.
Mamdani, who will be sworn in as mayor on January 1, stated in a press conference the day before he traveled 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 it too.”
Trump thinks Mamdani was ‘very nice’ to call him
Ugandan-born Mamdani will be the first Muslim and South Asian mayor in the city home to Wall Street. His energetic, social media-savvy campaign sparked debate about the best path forward for Democrats. Out of power in Washington and divided ideologically, Democrats are united primarily 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, food, child care and buses in a city of 8.5 million people. New Yorkers pay nearly double the average rent nationwide.
Inflation has been a major issue for Americans, and it’s one on which they give Trump low marks. Only 26% of Americans say Trump is doing a good job managing the cost of living, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll this week.
The US federal government will provide $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 from the New York State Comptroller’s Office. It was unclear what legal authority Trump could claim to withhold any funding ordered by Congress.
The two men exchanged criticism again within hours of Mamdani’s election.
“If anyone can show a nation betrayed by Donald Trump how to defeat him, it is the city that gave rise to him,” Mamdani told supporters in his victory speech, in which he asked Trump to “turn up the volume.”
Trump said he was baffled by Mamdani’s speech after excerpts were repeated to him during the Fox News interview Friday morning.
“I don’t know exactly what you mean by ‘turn up the volume.’ You have to be careful when you tell me that,” Trump said. “It was very kind of you to call, as you know, and we’re going to have a meeting.”
