Journalism of Courage
There was one moment in particular when Zohran Mamdani seemed like he might have bit off a little more than he could chew by making his lonely pilgrimage down to the lion’s den that is President Donald Trump’s blinged-out Oval Office.
The 34-year-old mayor-elect of New York was pressed by a reporter if he thought his host, who was sitting about 4 inches away, was really “a fascist.”
How terribly awkward.
But before Mamdani could even get out one of his slick and diplomatic answers, the president jumped in to throw him a lifeline.
“That’s OK, you could just say, ‘Yes,’” Trump said, looking highly amused by the whole thing. He waved his hand, as if being called the worst term in the political dictionary was no big deal.
“OK, all right,” Mamdani said with a smile.
“It’s easier,” Trump said. “It’s easier than explaining it.” Chuckling good-naturedly, he reached up and gave Mamdani a pat on the arm. “I don’t mind,” he added.
It was like the oddest screwball buddy comedy in American politics. The “fascist” and the “communist.” The president and the mayor. The old man and the young Turk.
Were these really the same two guys who had spent the last many months flicking acid darts at each other?
Trump had falsely claimed that Mamdani, a naturalized U.S. citizen, might be here illegally, and had threatened to have him arrested. He had demonized him as a “communist” who would drive his beloved hometown into the gutter.
Mamdani didn’t shy from a scrap. In a memorable zinger from his victory speech this month, he shot back, “So, Donald Trump, since I know you’re watching, I have four words for you: Turn the volume up.”
But if there is one thing Trump respects, it’s a winner. He made it clear Friday that he was impressed that Mamdani had triumphed as an underdog against the political establishment. “He came out of nowhere,” the president said. “What’d you start off at, 1 or 2? I watched, I said, ‘Who is this guy?’”
Trump also appreciates a good media spectacle, and he was keenly aware that he had one on his hands. “The press has eaten this thing up,” he marveled to the phalanx of cameras crowded into the Oval Office. “I’ve had a lot of meetings with the heads of major countries, nobody cared. This meeting — you people have gone crazy.”
Mamdani, for his part, was clever about deploying certain facts that would help disarm his host. He made a point of talking about how Trump had gained votes in New York in the last presidential election, and described talking to Trump voters on Hillside Avenue in Queens and Fordham Road in the Bronx.
“When we spoke to those voters who voted for President Trump, we heard them speak about cost of living,” Mamdani said. “We focus on that same cost of living.”
“He said a lot of my voters actually voted for him,” Trump chuckled, “and I’m OK with that.”
The two did a kind of populist pas de deux that would have been unthinkable in a previous political age.
For once, there was no talk of crypto, billionaires or a gilded ballroom. It was as if Mamdani was bringing out in Trump his original focus on economic issues, one that powered his political rise but which some influential figures in the MAGA movement have lately been accusing Trump of abandoning.
Things took a turn for the surreal when Trump stepped in to defend Mamdani from hard-edge questions being flung at him by the conservative media in the room.
One such type grilled Mamdani about why he had flown on a plane to Washington instead of taking a train, noting the latter would have been “greener.”
“If he flew, that’s a lot quicker,” Trump said. He then turned to his guest, adding, “I’ll stick up for you.”
The president is in the midst of one of the trickiest periods of his second term, with some members of his own party beginning to break away on certain issues and his poll numbers dipping. He lashed out at reporters this week, even calling one “piggy,” and made dark threats against Democratic lawmakers, accusing them of treason, which he said was “punishable by death.”
His meeting with Mamdani was the happiest he had seemed in a while. There are few things that perk him up like talking about the five boroughs, and at times the pair just seemed like two guys from Queens, yukking it up over a couple of steaks at Keens.
They talked a lot about the city, commiserating over high Con Edison prices (a reference to the local utility that may have escaped many viewers). When Mamdani was asked about policing, Trump jumped in to praise him for retaining the commissioner of the NYPD, Jessica Tisch. He explained that his daughter Ivanka considered Tisch a “good friend.”
Trump said he was surprised to learn that Mamdani wanted more buildings to be developed in New York. “If I read the newspapers and the stories, I don’t hear that,” he said. (The day after Mamdani won, the cover of Trump’s favorite newspaper, The New York Post, featured an illustration of the mayor-elect dressed in red and holding a hammer and sickle aloft.)
Who knows how long the warmth between them will last? Mamdani managed to make it out of the Oval Office without any visible battle scars, which is more than can be said for some other Democrats who have tried it.
The president said that he was hopeful for his hometown and its new mayor. “I feel very confident that he can do a very good job,” Trump said.
And what a job it is.
“By the way, being the mayor of New York City is a big deal,” the president of the United States said. “I always said, you know, one of the things I would have loved to be some day is the mayor of New York City.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
