President Trump and Zohran Mamdani, the mayor-elect of New York City, are open about their mutual distaste.
Mr. Trump has privately acknowledged Mr. Mamdani’s political talent but has publicly described the mayor-elect of his native city as a “lunatic” and a “radical,” and also as an unattractive man.
“He looks TERRIBLE, his voice is grating, he’s not very smart,” Mr. Trump said on social media after Mr. Mamdani won the Democratic primary in June.
Again and again, Mr. Trump has falsely labeled Mr. Mamdani a “communist,” even though he is a democratic socialist.
He has threatened to withhold as much funding as the law allows him to from a Mamdani-led New York City.
And when Mr. Trump revealed that he would be meeting with Mr. Mamdani on Friday, he did so while seeming to mock Mr. Mamdani’s middle name, Kwame, which the mayor-elect has said his father gave him in honor of Ghana’s first president, Kwame Nkrumah.
“Communist Mayor of New York City, Zohran ‘Kwame’ Mamdani, has asked for a meeting,” Mr. Trump said on social media on Wednesday.
Mr. Mamdani has also made no secret of his feelings about Mr. Trump.
During his victory speech a few weeks ago, Mr. Mamdani called Mr. Trump a “despot” and a walking avatar of New York City’s “corrupt landlords” and “culture of corruption.”
He criticized Mr. Trump’s deportation policies and said the president had mounted a “war on working people.”
Mr. Mamdani campaigned against what he described as a culture of collusion between the City Hall led by Eric Adams, the outgoing mayor, and the president whose Justice Department abandoned the criminal corruption charges Mr. Adams had faced.
But Mr. Mamdani has also acknowledged tapping into a similar vein of voter discontent with high prices and politics as usual as Mr. Trump did. And in the run-up to their Friday meeting, he was temperate in his remarks about Mr. Trump.
“I have many disagreements with the president, and I believe that we should be relentless and pursue all avenues and all meetings that could make our city affordable for every single New Yorker,” Mr. Mamdani said on Thursday.
“I intend to make it clear to President Trump that I will work with him on any agenda that benefits New Yorkers. If an agenda hurts New Yorkers, I will also be the first to say something.”
Dana Rubinstein covers New York City politics and government for The Times.
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