THE GUARDIAN: ‘We agreed a lot more than I would have thought,’ the US president said of his first face-to-face meeting with the New York mayor-elect
Donald Trump and Zohran Mamdani, the New York City mayor-elect, walked out of their meeting on Friday afternoon with an unlikely alliance, agreeing to work together on housing, food prices and cost-of-living concerns that have defined both their political appeals to working-class voters.
“We agreed a lot more than I would have thought,” Trump said in the Oval Office, sometimes jumping in to shield Mamdani from aggressive questioning from the press.
The sit-down – which many had anticipated would be contentious, given months of intense rhetoric in which Trump branded Mamdani a “communist lunatic” – instead produced camaraderie, warm words and concrete pledges of cooperation between the Republican president and the self-described democratic socialist who secured a commanding electoral victory earlier at the beginning of November with over 50% of the vote.
“I feel very confident that he can do a very good job,” Trump said after the meeting, offering praise for his ideological opposite. “The better he does, the happier I am. I will say there’s no difference in party. There’s no difference in anything, and we’re going to be helping him to make everybody’s dream come true, having a strong and very safe New York.”
The president congratulated Mamdani on his mayoral victory, describing it as “an incredible race against smart people” – and the two politicians shook hands. » | Joseph Gedeon in Washington | Friday, November 21, 2025
