After the friendly White House meeting on Friday between President Trump and Zohran Mamdani, the mayor-elect of New York City, the prospect of the National Guard being deployed to the city in the coming months seems less likely.
In an interview on “Meet the Press” on Sunday, Mr. Mamdani declined to say whether Mr. Trump had made a commitment not to send troops into the city. But Mr. Mamdani said he had made a strong case to the president that the National Guard was not needed and that crime was under control.
“I made it very clear what we wanted to do was to deliver public safety and affordability, and the N.Y.P.D. would be the ones to do so,” Mr. Mamdani told Kristen Welker, the show’s moderator.
For his part, Mr. Trump said on Saturday that he had no immediate plans to send the Guard to New York.
“Right now, other places need it more,” he told reporters. “We had a very good meeting yesterday. We talked about that.”
Mr. Trump did suggest that those plans could change, though.
“If they need it,” he said, referring to the city’s residents. “I would do it.”
Mr. Trump has in the past threatened to send the Guard to New York, as he has to other cities. Mr. Mamdani takes office on Jan. 1, and some New Yorkers have been worried that the president would immediately seek a showdown with the new mayor.
But during his appearance with Mr. Mamdani in the Oval Office on Friday, Mr. Trump seemed less inclined to confront him, praising Mr. Mamdani and Jessica Tisch, whom Mr. Mamdani is keeping on as police commissioner.
“I expect to be helping him, not hurting him,” Mr. Trump said.
Mr. Mamdani’s interview on “Meet the Press” was his first since the meeting. He called the conversation with Mr. Trump “productive” and stuck to his message that he wanted to find ways to work with the president to address the city’s affordability crisis.
Mr. Mamdani, though, reiterated his belief that Mr. Trump was a fascist.
“That’s something that I’ve said in the past,” he said. “I say it today.”
Asked if he stood by his past comments that Mr. Trump was a despot and represented an “attack on our democracy,” Mr. Mamdani said that he did.
“Everything that I’ve said in the past, I continue to believe,” he said.
Bur the mayor-elect insisted that he could find ways to work with Mr. Trump on the core issues of his campaign, including the high cost of groceries, child care and housing.
Mr. Mamdani recounted how he and Mr. Trump had “admired” a portrait of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the Cabinet Room. Mr. Mamdani said it had made him think about how his favorite New York City mayor, Fiorello La Guardia, could not have been as successful as he was without the help he received from Mr. Roosevelt.
“You can’t tell the story of La Guardia without telling the story of F.D.R. and the story of a relationship with the federal government that finally delivered at the scale of the crisis it was facing,” he said.
The trip to the White House was Mr. Mamdani’s second. He first visited in 2011, with his mother, the filmmaker Mira Nair, when Barack Obama was president. The pair attended an arts event at the White House, said Mr. Mamdani’s spokeswoman, Dora Pekec.
Mr. Mamdani made clear on “Meet the Press” that he wanted Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic minority leader, to become speaker should the party regain control of the House.
The relationship between Mr. Mamdani and Mr. Jeffries has been somewhat frosty. Mr. Jeffries resisted endorsing Mr. Mamdani for months, even while many other Democrats came around to supporting him. But, in recent days, Mr. Mamdani has moved to stop Chi Ossé, a progressive City Council member, from running against Mr. Jeffries.
Mr. Mamdani has said that he wants to avoid political distractions and to focus on his affordability plans, including making buses free and enacting universal child care.
At the meeting with Mr. Trump, Mr. Mamdani appeared upbeat but also seemed stoic at times amid the president’s flattery. The mayor-elect is known for his beaming smile, but it was absent during a series of photos that Mr. Trump posted with him.
When Mr. Mamdani was asked on “Meet the Press” about whether he had expected the meeting to be so chummy and what had been going through his head, he returned to his campaign message.
“You know, I thought again and again about what it would mean for New Yorkers if we could establish a productive relationship that would focus on the issues that those New Yorkers stay up late at night thinking about,” he said.
Georgia Gee contributed research.
Emma G. Fitzsimmons is the City Hall bureau chief for The Times, covering Mayor Eric Adams and his administration.
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