As the 2025 New York mayoral election played out, President Donald Trump blasted Zohran Mamdani as a “100% Communist Lunatic,” while Mamdani called Trump a “despot” who had “betrayed” the nation and declared his administration would be “Donald Trump’s worst nightmare.”
But there they were palling around together this week. Many conservatives were perplexed by the sight of Trump embracing the socialist mayor at the very moment Republicans are arguing that socialists are the face of the Democratic Party ahead of the midterms. But Trump has shown he will meet with anyone — from North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un to Chinese dictator Xi Jinping, for whom Trump is rolling out the red carpet this week. His warm approach to Mamdani should come as no surprise.
The bigger question is: If Mamdani can have a respectful, even cordial, meeting with Trump, why can’t the Democrats’ Senate and House leaders Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries?
Trump has hosted Mamdani for two extremely friendly meetings at the White House, and Mamdani returned the favor by inviting Trump to Gracie Mansion — a residence that Trump, who has expended enormous energy on improving the White House, said was “beautifully kept.” At a news conference following their hour-long meeting, Trump said he had seen many mayors at the mansion over the years. “I’ve seen it with numerous different mayors … some great ones and some not-so-great ones, so hopefully you’re going to be a great one.” They discussed Mamdani’s plans to develop 12,000 new homes atop a working railway yard in Queens. “I appreciate the president, his interest in this,” Mamdani said, “and we also know the president not just as the leader of the country, but also as someone who has built quite a lot of housing here in our city.”
In an interview with CNN after the meeting, Mamdani was asked how he got along so well with Trump. “I think of the many differences of opinion the president and I have, we have one thing that brings us together, which is a love of New York City,” he said. “We are both New Yorkers. And what I focus on in those conversations with the president is how we can make life better for the people who call this city their home.”
Well, Schumer and Jeffries are also New Yorkers. Why can’t they bring themselves to say the same thing?
I asked Trump why he thinks Mamdani can meet respectfully with him to find common ground, but Schumer and Jeffries cannot. “Because they suffer from Trump derangement syndrome,” he told me in a text message. “I have beaten them, at every level, too much.” Why does Mamdani not suffer from TDS? “Confidence in himself,” Trump told me. If Schumer and Jeffries had responded to him the way Mamdani has, would he have worked with them? “YES,” Trump replied.
Imagine how different the past decade of American political life would have been if, after Trump was first elected, Schumer had declared: “I know Donald Trump well. We are both New Yorkers. Where we agree, I will be his ally in Congress. Where we disagree, I will try to change his mind. And where we can’t cut a deal, we will let the democratic process sort it out. But we will find common ground to get things done for the American people.”
Trump would have embraced Schumer just as he has Mamdani. Indeed, Trump reportedly called Schumer the morning after the 2016 election offering to work with him. But instead of accepting Trump’s outstretched hand, Schumer and his Democratic colleagues shunned the new president — challenging the legitimacy of his victory by pushing the now-disproven conspiracy theory that he had colluded with Russia during the campaign.
Perhaps, as Trump suggests, Schumer did not have the confidence to buck his party’s Trump-deranged base. After Trump’s victory in 2016, the battle cry of the Democratic Party was “Resist!” Maybe he feared a left-wing primary if he cooperated. Whatever the reason, the strategy of unrelenting resistance and lawfare backfired — pushing Trump to the right in his first term and paving the way for his improbable return in 2024.
The Democrats’ Trump derangement has not abated in the years since. Just look at the response from the party’s base when Jeffries dared to meet with Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and adviser. If anything, it is Republicans who should have been angry about that meeting, which suggested the administration viewed a Democratic midterm victory as inevitable.
Democrats should have been elated. Instead, they lashed out at Jeffries. Longtime Democratic operative James Carville warned him that “you do not meet with them” and declared that his job was to “drag [Kushner’s] ass” before a congressional committee. Jeffries was forced to backtrack, declaring in a post on X that “no one from the Trump Cartel is getting a pass” and that as House speaker he would “hold the crooks accountable.”
In other words, Democrats appear to have learned nothing from their disastrous handling of Trump’s political rise. If they take power on Capitol Hill this November, expect them to resume their strategy of resistance — focusing on investigation and impeachment and pushing a radical left-wing agenda instead of the bipartisan compromise and cooperation that most Americans want but that seems to be anathema to their voters.
That approach has cost them the presidency twice. It won’t work any better the third time around.
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