Trump and Mamdani’s unexpected meeting turned into a surprising collaboration in the Oval Office.
I definitely did not see this coming. When it was announced yesterday that Zohran Mamdani would be meeting with President Trump at the White House today, the image that came to mind was something like Ukrainian President Zelensky’s first visit which started with some shouting and ended with Zelensky being kicked out.
That’s not at all how it went today. On the contrary, this appeared to be a real love fest. President Trump described himself as surprised by what Mamdani had to say and praised him repeatedly as someone who had a chance to make New York better.
“I feel very confident that he can do a good job,” Mr. Trump said Friday afternoon in the Oval Office. “I think he is going to surprise some conservative people actually.”
In a striking turnabout, Mr. Trump and Mr. Mamdani, who had lobbed labels like “communist” and “despot” at one another during a mayoral campaign filled with vitriol, nodded when the other spoke and smiled at each other supportively. But they also sidestepped questions that might have highlighted their most polarizing positions.
“We agree on a lot more than I would have thought,” Mr. Trump said about Mr. Mamdani, New York’s first Muslim mayor. While this public posture is quite a change for the president, Mr. Trump has privately complimented Mr. Mamdani in recent weeks.
Here’s how well this meeting went for Mamdani. A reporter asked if he still believed Trump was a fascist and as Mamdani started to answer, Trump just waived him off and told him to just say yes.
