Donald Trump is no longer keen on deploying the National Guard to New York City after his chummy meeting with the Big Apple’s new mayor-elect, Zohran Mamdani.
When asked by reporters Saturday if he was still interested in sending the National Guard to his home city, Trump, 79, said, “If they need it. Right now, other places need it more. We had a very good meeting yesterday. We talked about that. But if they need it, I would do it.”
The statement is a stunning reversal of Trump’s previous threats to deprive New York of federal aid and deploy the National Guard in the city if it elected Mamdani. During the NYC mayoral campaign, Trump intimated he’d send troops to New York if the “communist” wins.
“We have a communist, 33 years old, doesn’t know a thing, probably never worked a day in his life, and he sort of caught on. I’m not going to send a lot of money to New York,” Trump said on Oct. 15. “We’re not going to ruin one of our great cities, because we’ll make that great. We will clean up the crime in about 30 days.”
Trump’s statements had New York politicians ready to fight fiercely against a National Guard deployment. Mamdani’s main rival in the race, former New York governor Andrew Cuomo, tried to scare voters by saying that Trump would “kill” New York with aid cuts and troops if Mamdani won. When Mamdani campaigned, he declared he was ready to fight back against the president as Trump’s “worst nightmare.”
This set the stage for what onlookers expected to be a slugfest when the 34-year-old Democratic socialist visited the White House on Friday.
Instead, Trump seemed downright enamored with the new mayor. He reversed his threats to pull federal funding from the city during the meeting, saying, “I expect to be helping him — a big help.”
He dismissed Republican fearmongering over New York, saying he would be “comfortable” living in the city after meeting Mamdani.
He even went so far as to encourage Mamdani to call him a “fascist” in the Oval Office when a reporter tried to grill the young mayor-elect on his campaign rhetoric.
The lovefest baffled Republicans who had been casting Mamdani as the villainous, radical new face of the Democratic Party since the election, a charge Trump also shot down in the Oval Office.
When Trump was asked if he agreed with New York Rep. and gubernatorial candidate Elise Stefanik’s claim that Mamdani was a “jihadist,” Trump said, “No, I don’t. She’s out there campaigning. You say things sometimes on a campaign.”
“I think this mayor could be really great,” he added. “We agree on a lot more than I would have thought.”
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