President Donald Trump met New York Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani in the Oval Office on Friday and called their meeting “great” and “very productive.” Trump said, “We’ve just had a great meeting-a really good, very productive meeting.
We have one thing in common: we want this city of ours that we love to do very well.” “I just want to congratulate… I think you’re going to have hopefully a really great mayor,” he added. Mamdani, who was standing beside seated Trump, said, “I appreciated the meeting with the president. 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.”
“We had a meeting today that actually surprised me,” Trump said. “I expect to be helping him, not hurting him. We agree on a lot more than I would’ve thought,” Trump added. Trump said they talked about housing, food, and a range of other topics around affordability. “Anything I do is going to be good for New York,” Trump added.
Asked if he would feel comfortable living in New York City under Mamdani’s leadership as mayor, Trump said, “Yeah, I would.”
Mamdani had compared Trump to a “despot” and vowed to stand up to him in his victory speech. Asked about the comment, Mamdani said he wants to focus on “the shared purpose” they have for serving New Yorkers.
Trump responded, “I’ve been called much worse than a despot. So, it’s, it’s not that insulting, but I think he’ll change his mind after we get to working together.”
‘We want to see peace in the Middle East’
In response to a reporter’s question, Trump said, “It’s another thing, I think we have in common. We want to see peace in the Middle East.” Trump then turned to Mamdani and said, “I think you feel very, very strongly about peace in the Middle East.”
Mamdani responded, “We desperately want it.”
Asked about his earlier remarks calling Mamdani a “communist”, Trump said the NYC mayor-elect has “got views that are a little out there.”
“We’ll get to see what works, or he’s going to change, also, we all change. I changed a lot from when I first came to the office. It’s now quite a while ago, quite a while.”
Asked about their differences on policy, Trump said, “I think we are going to work them out.”
Both agree that the people want a safer New York
Both Trump and Mamdani said they agree that the people want a safer New York.
Trump said, “Ultimately, a safer New York is going to be a great New York. If it’s not safe, no matter how well we do with pricing and with, anything else, we can talk about anything you want, if you don’t have safe streets, it’s not going to be a success.”
Mamdani said that they spoke about safety and security. “Look, I think that there are many things in our city where we have to own the responsibility of it, things that existed long before the president was the president… part of the message of our campaign was to take on the broken politics of the past,” Mamdani said.
‘I was hitting him a little hard too, in all fairness’
Earlier, in an interview, Trump downplayed Mamdani’s past criticism of him and said that he expects to “get along fine” with Mamdani when they meet despite their “very different philosophy.”
Trump also praised Mamdani’s campaign and described it as “a good race”. He said the mayor-elect was “nice” during their call.
“He has got a different philosophy. He’s a little bit different… But I think we’ll get along fine. We are looking for the same thing – we want to make New York strong and, you know, there’s such a different philosophy,” Trump said.