President Donald Trump offered praise for New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani on Friday after the two men met for the first time at the White House to discuss the growing issue of affordability.
While the Republican president and the Democratic mayor-elect have hurled searing attacks at each other in the recent past, they repeatedly shrugged off those words while appearing side by side in the Oval Office.
At one point, when Mamdani was asked for the second time about having called Trump a “fascist,” the president gave him cover.
“That’s OK, you can just say yes,” Trump said after Mamdani began to respond. “It’s easier than explaining it.”
Trump also appeared to backtrack on his prior threat to withhold federal funding for New York City if Mamdani became its mayor.
“I don’t think that’s going to happen,” Trump said.
Instead of rehashing their feud, they talked up their areas of agreement on broad issues, especially focusing on lowering the cost of living.
But they also found common ground on some more specific matters, such as getting NYC-based energy giant Con Edison to lower prices.
“We’ve gotten fuel prices way down, but it hasn’t shown up in Con Edison, and we’re going to have to talk to them … to start lowering the rates,” Trump said.
“Absolutely,” Mamdani added.
Trump gave more praise than Mamdani returned, but the two did trade some compliments.
“I think you’re going to have, hopefully, a really great mayor,” Trump said. “The better he does, the happier I am.”
“I appreciated the meeting with the president,” said Mamdani, who stood while Trump sat at the Resolute Desk. “And as he said, it was a productive meeting focused on a place of shared admiration and love, which is New York City and the need to deliver affordability to New Yorkers.”
The conciliatory tone was brand new. Mamdani had laced into the president on the campaign trail and in his electoral victory speech, saying, “If anyone can show a nation betrayed by Donald Trump how to defeat him, it is the city that gave rise to him.”
And just two days earlier, Trump had called Mamdani the “Communist Mayor of New York City.” The mayor-elect is a self-described democratic socialist who denies being a communist.
The Oval Office meeting was requested by Mamdani, the 34-year-old whose stunning triumph in the mayoral race over former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has put him at the center of American politics.
“I will work with anyone to make life more affordable for the more than eight-and-a-half million people who call the city home,” Mamdani said Thursday.
Mamdani and other Democrats who won a bevy of elections this month had focused relentlessly on affordability — a word that Trump has chafed at, while insisting that prices are broadly down already.
Meanwhile, the president’s approval ratings have fallen precipitously in numerous polls, with respondents consistently pointing to the high cost of living as a main concern.
