The thing about NYC’s mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani is that a lot of Democrats, myself included, are never going to f–k with anyone who didn’t endorse Kamala Harris and encourage people to vote for her. Mamdani had many opportunities to do so last year, and he refused. People have argued for the past year that Mamdani’s non-endorsement was some kind of political purity, that he’s just so dedicated to his Democratic Socialist ideology. Well, the ideologically pure socialist guy lavished flattery on Donald Trump on Friday and now Trump loves Mamdani. Turns out, it wasn’t ideological purity after all – Mamdani is just a regular old politician, and he’s fine with cozying up to Trump. Sure, you can argue that it’s a political necessity for the incoming mayor of New York. I agree, it was the smart thing to do politically. It’s just weird to me that Mamdani didn’t show a similar political savvy when it came to the 2024 election.
A high-stakes White House meeting between President Donald Trump and mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani turned into a lovefest — with both men heaping populist praise on each other for pursuing ways to address the cost of living. Mamdani, a 34-year-old democratic socialist, needed to avoid the mercurial Republican president using the might of the federal government to cut New York City’s aid or send in the National Guard. Trump allies wanted the president to show he would prevent the Big Apple from being bankrupted by socialism.
But Mamdani appeared — at least for the time being — to neutralize those threats during the closed-door tête-à-tête by sticking to a strategy of staying laser-focused on issues of affordability, according to a top aide who sat in on the talk. After they emerged from the private meeting, Trump even told reporters that Mamdani had played up their unlikely political similarities: Mamdani “said a lot of my voters actually voted for him,” said the evidently pleased president. Mamdani noted that he often spoke with those voters — a point that elicited a grin from the president sitting behind the Resolute Desk.
The meeting was dominated by presidential compliments for Mamdani’s upstart campaign, a focus on blue-collar people and Trump’s interest in helping enact aspects of the new mayor’s agenda, like an expansion of much-needed housing.
“We had some interesting conversation, and some of his ideas really are the same ideas I have,” Trump said. “The new word is affordability.”
Trump, though, appeared to go beyond simply agreeing with the mayor on broad issues. He was practically smitten by the Queens state assemblymember, who was a virtual unknown a year ago. “We had a meeting today that actually surprised me,” Trump told reporters during the extraordinary public portion of the get together. Indeed, the interaction between Mamdani and the voluble president shocked the political world. It was a surreal scene: The president, who belittled Mamdani as “my little communist,” and the incoming New York City mayor, who blasted Trump in his election night victory speech as a fascist, smiling together, occasionally patting each other on the elbow.
“I think this mayor is going to be doing some things that are really great,” Trump said.
While people are already falling all over themselves to call Mamdani the most charismatic pol since Obama, I think a lot of people are missing the fact that Trump is always going to TACO. Trump Always Chickens Out. Trump Always Changes His Mind (TACHM) as well. Trump is always going to go whichever way the wind blows – he’ll have one “good” meeting where he’s super-friendly with a socialist, and then a different medication kicks in the next day and he’ll decide to call himself Piggy Hitler or whatever. But sure, Trump appeared to have a schoolboy crush on Mamdani during their meeting. And the “it’s okay to call me a fascist” moment broke Republicans’ brains, I’m sure.
Photos courtesy of Backgrid.
