President Donald Trump has no idea what Zohran Mamdani meant when he told him to “turn the volume up.”
Trump, 79, was left confused by the common phrase, which was among the viral moments of the New York City mayoral-elect’s victory speech this month.
“I don’t know exactly what he means by turning the volume up,” Trump told Fox host Brian Kilmeade on Friday.
Most understood the phrase to mean that Mamdani, 34, was telling the president to turn up his TV and listen to what he and his movement had to say—possibly doubling as a dig at Trump’s age by suggesting he is hard of hearing.
“This is not only how we stop Trump, it’s how we stop the next one,” Mamdani said in the speech. “So, Donald Trump, since I know you’re watching, I have four words for you: ‘Turn the volume up!’”
The phrase clearly did not register with the president.
“He has to be careful when he says that to me,” Trump told Kilmeade. “But nobody really was able—I said, what does that mean, turn the volume up? Does that mean, let’s go at it?”
Kilmeade answered, “Yes.” Trump cut off the Fox host to disagree, saying, “I don’t think so.”
He said Mamdani was “very nice” to call him after his election victory, and suggested that things would not be as fiery as they were during the campaign.
“I was hitting him a little hard, too,” Trump said. “In all fairness, it was, you know, hard to be totally friendly toward the opponent. You know, his opponent wasn’t—he had some interesting opponents, but he ran a good race.”
The two men are set to meet at the White House on Friday afternoon, a meeting closed to the press. However, Trump said he expects the conversation to be “civil.”
Even if there are fireworks at the meeting, as there was when Ukraine’s Volodmyr Zelensky visited the Oval Office for the first time in MAGA 2.0, the public would not get to see it live. Trump opted to hold the meeting in private, not in front of cameras.
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