This photo combination taken on November 19, 2025 shows President Trump on October 24, 2025 (left) and New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani in New York City on November 12, 2025.
Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/Charlie Triballo/AFP via Getty Images
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Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/Charlie Triballo/AFP via Getty Images
President Trump will meet with New York Elected Mayor Zohran Mamdani is at the White House on Friday afternoon in the Oval Office, marking their first face-to-face meeting.
Although previous mayors of New York have met with sitting presidents, Mamdani and Trump already collided before this meeting. Trump has repeatedly tried to portray Mamdani, a 34-year-old democratic socialist, as too radical and extremist for the city the president has long called home. In the president's announcement of the Truth Social meeting, Trump called Mamdani a “communist.”
This is a version that Mamdani has firmly rejected, promising to implement his program aimed at reducing the cost of living.
“My team has reached out to the White House to organize this meeting because I will work with everyone to make life more affordable for the more than eight and a half million people who call this city home,” Mamdani told reporters on Thursday. “I have many disagreements with the president, and I believe that we must be adamant and pursue every opportunity and every meeting that could make our city accessible to every New Yorker.”
Trump has been a vocal opponent of Mamdani since his upset victory in the June Democratic primary, saying he would arrest Mamdani if he disrupted ICE operations in the city and threatened to withhold federal funding from the city if he won in November.
“Look, we don’t need a communist in this country, but if we have one, I will watch him very closely on behalf of the nation,” Trump told reporters in the summer, shortly after Mamdani won the primary. Mamdani responded directly to Trump in his victory speech on election night. “Donald Trump, since I know you're watching, I have four words for you: Turn it up,” he said, adding, “To get to any of us, you'll have to go through all of us.”
In just a few months, Mamdani's candidacy for mayor has gone from an ambitious bid to a national movement, sparking interest far beyond New York in his progressive ideas, including freezing rents in rent-stabilized apartments, providing free city buses and opening city grocery stores; and skepticism about how the new mayor will find the money to pay for it all.
