What are a few deportation threats among friends? President Donald Trump has called Zohran Mamdani a “100% Communist lunatic” who “needs to be DEPORTED.” Mamdani called the president a “despot,” promising to “Trump-proof” New York. Yet they couldn’t have been chummier in their Oval Office meeting on Friday. What’s happening here?
Trump loves populists and winners, and Mamdani is both. A bust-up would have made for great television, but their effusiveness toward one another made for viewing more fantastical.
“The better he does, the happier I am,” Trump declared. “I will say there is no difference in party. There’s no difference in anything.” Mamdani said he is “looking forward” to working with Trump. The president replied that he expects Mamdani to make “a really great mayor.”
About those nasty insults? “I’ve been called much worse than a despot,” Trump said, optimistic Mamdani would come around. When a reporter pressed the mayor-elect on whether he still thinks Trump is a fascist, the president patted him on the arm: “That’s okay, you can just say yes. It’s easier than explaining it.” When another reporter gave Mamdani a hard time for flying to D.C. rather than taking the Amtrak, a strike against the mayor’s climate credentials, Trump interjected to say Mamdani is too busy to take the slower train.
Acting like grown-up governing partners, the pair repeatedly brought the conversation back to affordability, housing and crime, which is when Trump offered the mayor-elect – who in 2021 called violence an “artificial construction” – the endorsement of the century: He said he will feel “very, very comfortable” in New York under Mayor Mamdani.
This surreal scene is no bad thing for voters who have been told that the other side is the mortal enemy, though they might wonder how sincere each side was in their election insults. In reality, Mamdani and Trump have some shared interests, and it’s not just about building more apartments and tackling inflation. Both men are looking to seize more executive power, deepen the reach of the state into people’s everyday lives and bring government to bear on businesses and entrepreneurs who won’t fall in line.
Mamdani knew he had much to lose walking into the Oval Office, including $7.4 billion of federal funding the Big Apple relies on to keep services running. That’s why the mayor-elect astutely focused on their shared affinity for state capitalism and protectionist rackets. Trump said that “we have to get Con Edison to start lowering their rates.” Mamdani nodded.
The blurring of the public and private sector reflected Trump’s treatment of Intel, which handed over a 10 percent stake to the federal government, and earlier musings from Vice President JD Vance, who claimed in 2023: “there is no meaningful distinction between the public and the private sector in the American regime.” For Mamdani, what’s not to like about the state exerting more control over the means of production?
The extraordinary meeting ends a week in which Mamdani showed a promising pragmatic streak. He confirmed that he will keep the tough-on-crime Jessica Tisch in her role as New York City Police Commissioner. And he rejected New York council member Chi Osse’s primary challenge against House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-New York). Not to worry, disaffected leftists: At the Democratic Socialists of America meeting where he announced his opposition, Mamdani still opened by announcing his “he/him” pronouns.
Alas, what hasn’t changed is Mamdani’s disquieting posture toward Jewish New Yorkers. Following ugly protests outside a synagogue in Park East, the mayor-elect issued a statement that said he thinks “every New Yorker should be free to enter a house of worship without intimidation, and that these sacred spaces should not be used to promote activities in violation of international law.”
The false implication is that the synagogue is violating international law. Still unable to condemn antisemitism without caveat, the mayor-elect adopted a both-sides strategy. Then again, this is not worlds away from his new friend in the White House, whose party is also struggling to call out blatant antisemitism in its own ranks.
The mayor-elect’s actions this week seem to hint he is inclined to work within traditional institutions rather than tear them down, but if anyone can teach Mamdani how to shatter norms, it’s the president. “Some of his ideas are really the same ideas that I have,” Trump said. If the country’s left and right extremes were dismayed by the Trump-Mamdani bromance, the center has plenty of reason to worry too.
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