In a triumphant election-night speech earlier this month, New York Metropolis Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani addressed President Donald Trump instantly, telling the president to “flip the amount up.” Trump has repeatedly referred to as Mamdani a “Communist” and questioned his citizenship standing.
However when the 2 met within the Oval Workplace on Friday, it was all strikingly cordial — nearly affectionate. “Hopefully, you’ll have a very nice mayor,” Trump instructed reporters. “The higher he does, the happier I’m.”
To interrupt down what occurred of their assembly, why it wasn’t solely shocking, and what it may imply for New York Metropolis and the GOP, I turned to my colleague Astead Herndon, who has lined Trump and just lately wrote a definitive profile of Mamdani. Our dialog, edited for size and readability, is beneath.
So Donald Trump and Zohran Mamdani had this strikingly pleasant look within the Oval. What occurred? Is that this an enormous deal?
I definitely assume it’s an enormous deal. It displays the intention that Mamdani approached his total marketing campaign with, and significantly the overall election — his constant skill to show skeptics into supporters. That was persistently taking place in such a approach that it was constructed into his technique, and I believe we noticed that on the most important stage yesterday.
In some methods, it displays numerous the conferences that he’s had already, however in some methods, it’s a lot extra extraordinary contemplating what Trump has mentioned, and contemplating the best way Trump was actually coming to him. Trump’s the one throwing up the thumbs-up within the photographs, not Mamdani. And I believe that’s reflective of an strategy the place Mamdani and his workforce come to those [meetings] and attempt to concentrate on areas of settlement and shared values. They recognized affordability as one which they assume Donald Trump shared, and they also got here with that intention in thoughts. That’s the identical technique they’ve used for conferences of all types.
He has this playbook that’s labored very well. He’s gained over numerous people in New York Metropolis politics, in enterprise. Even on condition that, have been you stunned at how effectively Friday went?
I believed that Trump would love him, however I didn’t know that Trump would bathe reward on him. I didn’t assume that Trump would take a look at him type of like an uncle and nephew. He’s smiling in methods I haven’t seen him smile, even with political allies.
I do assume that it displays two politicians whose visions overlap. These are individuals who have each overcome political institutions and who each have interaction in a type of movement-based politics, not counting on transactional old-guard endorsement machines. I do assume there’s a type of New York, Queens respect for each other, and the ladder that Mamdani needed to climb to turn into mayor. These are additionally two individuals who see politics as a collective motion moderately than a person sport, and that’s not true of everyone.
Once I was at a Mamdani rally and the group can do call-and-response to his to his prime insurance policies — freeze the lease, make buses quick and free, make baby care free — the one different time I’ve heard that, the place individuals are in a position to name again the signature coverage, is with “construct the wall.” So it’s not simply showmanship, it’s showmanship plus a price that individuals belief and interesting with it past the normal political constructions.
Trump entered the political scene as this New York man, and that has light a bit bit over time. He’s moved to Florida; he’s down at Mar-a-Lago on a regular basis. However he’s nonetheless type of charmed by getting again to his Queens roots, proper?
I believe he cares deeply about New York. The standard Republican playbook is to let cities fail, or to even enjoy some cities’ failure, as they’ve completed with Chicago. I don’t assume Trump feels the identical approach about New York as a result of he’s invested his life within the place, and so I consider him when he says he desires the town to thrive.
Donald Trump felt so rejected by sure courses of New York, by sure sorts of ways in which elite New York Democratic liberalism had shut him out. However those self same constructions have shut out Zohran Mamdani, too. There’s a component of Queens outsider on this that does bond them.
Trump, in his early days in New York Metropolis, was very versatile about working with and donating to Democrats and Republicans. He was very sensible, arising as a builder within the New York political scene.
I believe that that’s required, and that practicality is mirrored in Mamdani. When folks have been seeing him as ideologically inflexible due to issues like DSA and his political historical past, one factor that was very clear to me throughout that marketing campaign was he was not seeing being mayor the identical approach he was seeing his job as a member of the New York State Meeting.
He understood that it’s a position the place he must compromise, he must put DSA at a distance, he must excite his base. I believe there was a recognition that there would should be flexibility. These are the entire similar issues Donald Trump rises in and that jack-of-all-trades, “be who you could be” type of mindset.
Why did this assembly occur within the first place, after the very contentious back-and-forth Trump and Mamdani had through the marketing campaign?
Mamdani’s workforce reached out, and I believe there was an actual sense that it was within the metropolis’s curiosity to not provoke Donald Trump, contemplating the entire rhetoric going forwards and backwards that Trump may impose a catastrophe on New York, whilst quickly as Inauguration Day.
Mamdani’s election evening speech was directed at Trump of their second of triumph, however it didn’t appear to me as if they might take a completely oppositional tone, at the least from the beginning. It appears to me to be in keeping with the technique they’ve taken with opponents of all types — a willingness to interact, given an preliminary perception of fine religion. I don’t assume that that’s the place all Democrats have been, however I do assume it’s a high quality that’s type of baseline if you wish to achieve success, significantly within the position of mayor.
Do you assume there may be something right here resembling a playbook for different Democrats or different mayors?
I don’t assume it’s totally different from the lesson that Mamdani has already proven. Donald Trump has all the time rewarded somebody who engaged with him instantly about their beliefs and got here from that place. I believe that was true in Nancy Pelosi, simply as true as it’s in Zohran.
However there are numerous different components taking place right here that matter. I believe the New Yorkness issues. I believe Mamdani as a communicator and his consolation in these areas issues. Simply coming from a spot of values lets you transfer on a podcast simpler, transfer within the Oval Workplace simpler, transfer an opponent or allies. That consolation is coming from the truth that Mamdani is aware of he’s not attempting to triangulate. That’s not the place Democrats have all the time been.
The place do you assume the Mamdani-Trump relationship goes from right here?
There are Republicans who’re attempting to run the straight jihadist fear-mongering playbook. Issues can change. They could be again to calling him Mamdani the Commie by subsequent week, and I believe we type of can count on that. However I believe these photos have been so searing that it’s going to be arduous.
They’re not solely searing, they observe a sample, which is that when folks have engaged with Mamdani, he has not matched the unconventional that Republicans and a few Democrats have been attempting to color him as. That’s the rationale he was profitable within the mayoral race, and it’s a cause why the Republican boogeyman technique was all the time threatening to be uncovered. On this second, I believe Trump truly has uncovered it.
