New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani knows how the game is played, and the internet can’t get enough of it.
On Thursday, Mamdani made a trip down to Washington, D.C., to meet with President Donald Trump for a second time. On this visit, he got Trump grinning ear to ear.
In a photo Mamdani posted on X, Trump beams while holding up mockups of the New York Daily News front page.
“I had a productive meeting with President Trump this afternoon,” Mamdani wrote in the X post. “I’m looking forward to building more housing in New York City.”
The newspaper’s headline was “Trump to city: let’s build,” followed by the subheadline “Backs New Era of Housing. Trump delivers 12,000+ homes, most since 1973.”
The mockup was made in the same style as the infamous Daily News headline about President Gerald Ford in 1975: “Ford to city: drop dead.”
Some people on X were amused by how the mayor managed to make Trump — his political antithesis — look so happy in a photo op.
So good. Forever will be baffled by how more people never figured out how to play Trump like a fiddle. pic.twitter.com/XvSAH7NkG5
— Jon Niconchuk (@JonNiconchuk) February 26, 2026
One X user wrote: “All those frothing ‘Mr. Mamdani got elected with a lot of promises, now let’s see how he plans to enact them’ op-eds and he just figured out the infinite money glitch like two months into the job.”
In another meme, captioned “art of the deal” — a reference to Trump’s book — an X user weighed in on how Mamdani secured the release of a Columbia student from ICE detention and successfully pitched a housing development plan to Trump.
art of the deal https://t.co/l7vcAuiR35 pic.twitter.com/a6lZNA89wz
— sam (@sam_d_1995) February 27, 2026
The Trump-Mamdani dynamic
In Mamdani’s victory speech in November, he issued a four-word warning to Trump: “Turn the volume up.”
Trump labeled the self-proclaimed Democratic Socialist New York mayor a “communist” throughout Mamdani’s mayoral campaign run.
But the dynamic shifted after Mamdani was sworn into office in January.
The internet was similarly obsessed with Mamdani’s first meeting with Trump in January, after which the president had only nice things to say about him.
When a reporter asked Mamdani if he considers Trump a fascist, Trump interjected: “That’s OK, you can just say yes. It’s easier than explaining it. I don’t mind.”
“I think you’re going to have, hopefully, a really great mayor,” Trump told reporters during the meeting. “He’s going to surprise some conservative people, actually.”
Trump also praised him in his State of the Union address to Congress this week.
“The new communist mayor of New York City, I think he’s a nice guy, actually,” Trump said during his speech. “I speak to him a lot. Bad policy, but nice guy.”
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