Zohran Mamdani, the mayor-elect of New York City, said on Monday that his team had reached out to White House officials to set up a meeting with President Trump, one day after Mr. Trump mentioned the possibility to reporters.
The effort to arrange a meeting represents a change in tone for both men. Mr. Mamdani ran for office arguing that only he had the necessary backbone and ethical compass to stand up to Mr. Trump, whom he described as a threat to democracy.
Mr. Trump, in turn, has belittled Mr. Mamdani for months, calling him a “100 percent communist lunatic” — Mr. Mamdani is in fact a democratic socialist — and predicting that he would cause great harm to the city if elected. In the waning days of the mayoral race, the president endorsed Mr. Mamdani’s main rival, former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo.
Mr. Mamdani and Mr. Trump have not yet spoken, according to his campaign, but Mr. Mamdani said the outreach was part of his commitment to “address the affordability crisis” that is forcing New Yorkers to leave the city.
Mr. Mamdani’s team reached out to White House officials in the last week, according to a spokeswoman. His remarks came the day after the president told reporters that Mr. Mamdani had sought him out, and seemed to soften his tone toward the mayor-elect.
“The mayor of New York, I will say, would like to meet with us and we’ll work something out,” Mr. Trump said on Sunday. “We want to see everything work out well for New York.”
The meeting would come at a potentially pivotal time for New York City, whose leaders have been gearing up for a confrontation with the federal government after the president threatened to send in National Guard troops.
In recent weeks, the Trump administration has explored whether to use a Coast Guard facility on Staten Island to hold detained immigrants, as it seeks to conduct more aggressive immigration roundups in New York.
Mr. Trump has also already withheld billions of dollars in federal aid to New York City and has threatened to pull even more.
On Thursday, Gov. Kathy Hochul’s office convened a meeting of business and civic leaders to discuss preparing for National Guard troops to be sent to the city — and to see how they might prevent it from happening. The same day, Ms. Hochul met directly with Mr. Mamdani.
Mr. Mamdani, who will take office Jan. 1, said he expected his conversation with Mr. Trump to revolve around New York’s affordability crisis.
He has said that if the president were willing to find common ground on the issue, he would be willing to work with him. But he has also expressed doubt that the president has any such intentions.
“The president ran a campaign where he spoke about a promise to deliver cheaper groceries, a promise to reduce the cost of living,” Mr. Mamdani said at news conference at a food pantry in the Bronx, where he served meals to visitors.
“We are seeing his actions and that of his administration in Washington leading to the exact opposite effect for New Yorkers.”
Mr. Mamdani has used Mr. Trump as fodder for his campaign, including in a widely seen video in which he visited Fordham Road in the Bronx and Hillside Avenue in Queens after Mr. Trump’s second election victory to ask passers-by why they had voted for him.
Their answers, many of which focused on the unaffordability of daily life and the war in Gaza, helped shape Mr. Mamdani’s campaign for mayor.
Trump voters told him at the time that they were attracted to the president’s message around issues like the cost of groceries. But Mr. Mamdani noted Monday that with cuts to food stamps along with aggressive immigration enforcement, many city residents were still suffering.
“What they had voted for was a chance at affording the day to day of their own lives,” Mr. Mamdani said. “And what we are finding is that the administration’s actions are making that all the more difficult.”
The mayor-elect was also asked on Monday about Chi Ossé, a left-leaning city councilman from Brooklyn, running a potential primary challenge to Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic minority leader. Mr. Ossé filed paperwork on Monday establishing his campaign with the Federal Election Commission.
Mr. Mamdani had privately tried to discourage Mr. Ossé from running, fearing that a high-profile challenge from the left might compromise his effort to push the Democratic establishment to support his affordability agenda.
On Monday, Mr. Mamdani said that he appreciated the work Mr. Ossé had done on the Council, especially on behalf of tenants, but there were “many ways right here in New York City to both deliver on an affordability agenda and take on the authoritarian administration in the White House.”
Jeffery C. Mays is a Times reporter covering politics with a focus on New York City Hall.
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