Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s surprisingly chummy meeting with President Trump last week flummoxed Republicans and delighted Democrats back home in New York City.
But as positive reviews continued to pour in from fellow Democrats, at least one high-profile skeptic stepped forward this week: Mayor Michelle Wu of Boston, a Democrat Mr. Mamdani considers a role model.
Speaking with reporters in her hometown on Monday, Ms. Wu pointedly cast doubt on the wisdom of courting a hostile leader like Mr. Trump, even if she avoided directly criticizing Mr. Mamdani.
“I’m not interested in a bromance with the federal regime,” she said, according to audio of the exchange provided by her office. She added that “flattery is not the way.”
Her comments illustrated the divergent approaches that big city mayors — even like-minded progressives — are taking as they attempt to navigate Mr. Trump’s extraordinary deportation tactics and use of the National Guard in Democratic jurisdictions.
Mr. Mamdani, 34, and Ms. Wu, 40, have many things in common. They share left-leaning policy goals, like fare-free public transit and strong rent regulations, and have both fashioned themselves as hard-line opponents of the Trump administration.
Yet Mr. Mamdani, who will take office in January, and Ms. Wu, who just won a second term, are approaching the president from vastly different positions.
Though Mr. Trump has targeted Boston’s migrant population, he has taken a far more active and personal posture toward New York, his former hometown, threatening to ramp up deportations there and cut off billions of dollars in annual federal funding if Mr. Mamdani pursues certain policies. (New York City has more a population more than 10 times the size of Boston’s, and its leader is typically considered a national political figure.)
Mr. Trump has also attacked Mr. Mamdani in personal terms, falsely casting doubt on his citizenship status and denouncing the mayor-elect, a democratic socialist, as a “communist.” Mr. Mamdani has called the president a fascist and threatened to be a thorn in his side.
Yet when the two appeared together before reporters on Friday after a private meeting, Mr. Trump’s enmity seemed to have melted away, at least temporarily. Both men acknowledged their substantial differences, but they said they had a productive discussion about working together to bring down living costs. Mr. Trump, in particular, appeared to be charmed.
Asked about Ms. Wu’s remarks, Dora Pekec, a spokeswoman for Mr. Mamdani, referred a reporter to the mayor-elect’s earlier comments about the meeting. Mr. Mamdani said that he still viewed Mr. Trump as a threat to democracy, but that he believed his job “demands that you work with everyone and anyone” to improve New Yorkers’ lives.
Democrats across the political spectrum liked what they saw. Many praised Mr. Mamdani for his shrewd maneuvering, and said they hoped it would insulate the city from the worst of the Trump administration.
Mr. Mamdani is far from the only Democrat trying to engage with the president despite strong objections to his policies. In New York, Gov. Kathy Hochul has kept an open line to the Trump White House, as did Mayor Eric Adams and Mayor Bill de Blasio before him. Katie Wilson, a democratic socialist recently elected mayor of Seattle, said she was open to meeting with Mr. Trump, too.
In her remarks, Ms. Wu emphasized that “every community has their unique and individual context, and every city leader, every university, every law firm, has to make their own decisions about how they handle this moment.”
But she said she had never met with Mr. Trump and did not intend to.
“I am fighting as hard as I possibly can to stop the actions of a federal government that seems intent on attacking its own people,” she said.
Nicholas Fandos is a Times reporter covering New York politics and government.
The post After Trump Meeting, One Progressive Mayor Questions Mamdani’s Approach appeared first on New York Times.
