Odd couple Trump and Mamdani sing from same song sheet in remarkable meeting

20 hours ago 4

Washington: Donald Trump began to soften on Zohran Mamdani when it became clear the young Muslim democratic socialist was going to become the next mayor of New York. The president loves a winner. Now, he seems to have melted like butter.

The odd couple met for the first time on Saturday (AEDT) in the Oval Office amid a flurry of media interest. Trump’s team happily heightened expectations. “We have a communist coming to the White House,” press secretary Karoline Leavitt teased.

What would happen? Would there be fireworks? Yelling? A walk-out?

“I’ll be cheering for him,” Trump said as he met New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani in the Oval Office.

In the end, none of the above. When they fronted the cameras after their meeting, Trump and Mamdani sang from the same song sheet. They might as well have sung Kumbaya.

“I think you’re going to have, hopefully, a really great mayor,” Trump enthused about the man he had frequently branded a communist lunatic. “The better he does, the happier I am.”

Standing beside a sitting Trump, Mamdani looked much stiffer than the smiling energiser bunny that came to characterise his campaign or his barnstorming election night victory speech. He was relentlessly on-message, saying he appreciated the meeting, and that the two of them were in lock step on the need to make America’s most expensive city more affordable.

They are also both YIMBYs, it seems. “He wants to see a lot of houses created, a lot of apartments built,” Trump said. “People would be shocked, but I want to see the same thing.”

Invited by reporters to retract his descriptions of Trump as a fascist and a despot, Mamdani declined to do so. Asked whether he still considered Trump a fascist, Trump encouraged Mamdani to say yes.

“It’s easier than explaining it, I don’t mind,” Trump said, patting him on the arm. The president wasn’t fazed by the label, anyway. “I’ve been called much worse than a despot. It’s not that insulting.”

the pair need each other. Trump is getting clobbered on the cost of living, and Mamdani must protect his city’s federal funding.

The men acknowledged they had disagreements but refused to dwell on them. Trump mused that Mamdani would probably change some of his views in office. “We all change,” he said. “I changed a lot.”

The president even defended Mamdani when a reporter queried why, as a public transport advocate, the mayor-elect flew to Washington from New York instead of taking the three-hour train.

Trump and Mamdani have been likened to two sides of the same coin, both propelled to victory by their populist pledges to improve people’s lives by bringing down prices.

Both campaigned strongly against perceived enemies; in Trump’s case, Joe Biden’s Democrats and foreign countries screwing over the US; for Mamdani it was the top end of town and the Democratic elite that had run New York.

The president has discovered that achieving those populist promises is much more difficult than making them. Mamdani is likely to find the same thing.

Treasury secretary Scott Bessent watched as the press pack tried to unpick the two men’s détente.

But right now, they both need each other. Trump watched the Republicans lose badly in recent elections and is himself getting clobbered in the polls on the economy and cost of living. Mamdani is a proven winner, and won on a relentless campaign about affordability. Trump needs some of that sheen to rub off on him.

Mamdani came into the meeting from a position of strength. He has an unquestionable mandate and, as both men recognised, they have a mutual love of New York – the city where Trump was born, raised and moulded.

But Mamdani needs Trump’s money. New York is dependent on federal funding, and the mayor-elect already faces a tough battle with his state government in Albany to raise taxes to fund his promises. Trump can also choose to spare New York from the kind of immigration enforcement operations that have been seen in Los Angeles, Chicago and Charlotte.

Zohran Mamdani will return to New York confident that he has charmed Donald Trump into staying off his back.

It was a remarkable meeting, but it was predictable a mile off. Trump has been walking back his Mamdani rhetoric all month, and reportedly told aides he was impressed by the 34-year-old and his slick campaign.

Obviously, Trump can turn on a dime, but Mamdani will head back to the city confident that he has charmed the president into staying off his back.

“I expect to be helping him, not hurting him,” Trump told reporters. “We agree on a lot more than I would have thought.