President Trump held a rather friendly meeting with New York City Mayor-elect Zoran Mamdani at the White House on Friday after weeks of heated rhetoric.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Yesterday at the White House, President Trump held a friendly, almost friendly meeting with New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani. The two men showered each other with praise and complimented each other on their political victories.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I think you're going to have a really great mayor. And the better he does it, the happier I am.
SIMON: It was a remarkable show of mutual respect after weeks of vicious personal attacks. NPR White House correspondent Franco Ordonez reported this story.
FRANCO ORDOÑEZ, BYLINE: During the New York mayoral campaign, President Trump called Mamdani a communist madman and threatened to cut off funding if he was elected.
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TRUMP: Look, the Mamdani thing is a disaster waiting to happen. We cannot have a communist running a large, supposedly free enterprise, representative city.
ORDOÑEZ: And Mamdani called himself Donald Trump's worst nightmare. He called Trump a fascist in his victory speech and a despot in his victory speech.
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ZOHRAN MAMDANI: So, Donald Trump, since I know you're watching, I have four words for you. Turn up the volume.
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ORDOÑEZ: But on Friday, the two adversaries were full of smiles and promises to cooperate on lowering housing and food costs, even as they talked of finding common ground on tougher issues like crime.
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TRUMP: I expect to help him, not hurt him – a big help because I want New York to be great. Look, I love New York. This is where I'm from.
ORDOÑEZ: And Mamdani reciprocated.
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MAMDANI: I appreciated the meeting with the president. And as he said, it was a productive meeting about the place of shared admiration and love that is New York and the need to ensure accessibility for New Yorkers.
ORDOÑEZ: So they both have a mutual interest in getting along with each other. Mamdani wants to protect federal funding that Trump has threatened to withhold. The president has not shied away from using the levers of federal power to attack his opponents. And Trump wants to take back his economic message, which Mamdani took and remade into his own winning message of affordability.
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MAMDANI: And I can tell you that in the last presidential election, more New Yorkers voted for President Trump because of this focus on the cost of living, and I look forward to working together to deliver on this affordability agenda.
ORDOÑEZ: The audience show was filled with kind words. At one point, when a reporter asked Mamdani if ​​he still thought Trump was a fascist, the president gave him a pass.
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TRUMP: I've been called much worse than a despot, so it's not that offensive. Maybe I think he'll change his mind when we start working together.
ORDOÑEZ: But that friendliness can come at a cost. Trump used Mamdani as a convenient foil, urging Republicans to present him as the face of the Democratic Party. This was set to be a key talking point in the midterm elections, and he may well again decide that confrontation is better than affection.
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TRUMP: I mean, he has views and… but who knows? I mean we'll see what works or he changes too. We all change. I've changed a lot.
ORDOÑEZ: But for now, that mutual praise could complicate Republican efforts to make New York a political powerhouse, and it remains to be seen whether other prominent Republicans will follow Trump's lead when it comes to supporting Mamdani.
Franco Ordonez, NPR News, White House.
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