Fox News anchor Brian Kilmeade said the friendly meeting between President Donald Trump and Zohran Mamdani has left JD Vance “jealous.”
The president and New York City Mayor-elect recapped a closed-door meeting to reporters in the Oval Office Friday afternoon, with Trump complimenting the 34-year-old as a “very rational person.”
Trump continued to take much of the air out of Republicans’ attacks on the democratic socialist by saying he would feel comfortable living in New York under Mamdani’s administration and that “some of his ideas are really the same ideas that I have.”
Trump, 79, was seen smiling at Mamdani multiple times during the press conference. The two shook hands when it was over, with Trump patting him on the arm and slapping him on the hand twice.
The encounter may have Trump’s vice president feeling left out, Kilmeade commented afterward.
“I think JD Vance is jealous. I think the president wants to use him as a running mate,” Kilmeade, 61, said, even though Trump is barred from serving a third term. “They got along fantastic.”
“This was a love-fest,” the Fox anchor added later. “It was a respect-fest.”
Vance’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Beast, so it’s unclear whether he is “jealous” of the two hitting it off. But the vice president, 41, did say months ago on a podcast that if he could have dinner with three people, living or dead, one of them would be Trump, despite the fact that he is not only alive but regularly accessible to him.
In any event, Vance’s only public reaction to the Trump-Mamdani meeting thus far has been a post on X.
“POTUS has a lot of good moments but this is an all-timer,” he wrote in response to Trump telling Mamdani it’s OK to just call him a “fascist” when a reporter asked Mamdani to clarify some of his past comments.
“That’s OK, you can just say that stuff,” Trump said. “It’s easier—it’s easier than explaining it.”
Trump, who had called Mamdani a “communist lunatic” and “not very smart” in the weeks leading up to their first encounter, claimed that the 34-year-old is “going to change” once he’s in office. “I changed a lot,” Trump said. “I feel very confident that he can do a very good job. I think he is going to surprise some conservative people, actually.”
The post Fox News Anchor Gobsmacked by Trump’s Mamdani Meeting appeared first on The Daily Beast.
