President Donald Trump struck a conciliatory tone after his Nov. 21 meeting with New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, calling their White House discussion “a really good, very productive meeting.”
The meeting — requested by Mamdani’s team earlier in the week — focused on affordability, housing development, and public safety. Both men later described their conversation as constructive despite their recent clashes.
“We’ve just had a great meeting, a really good, very productive meeting,” Trump told reporters afterward, saying the two share “one thing in common — we want this city of ours that we love to do very well.”
“The better he does, the happier I am,” Trump added. “There’s no difference in party, there’s no difference in anything.”
Trump added that “some of his ideas are really the same ideas that I have,” and shifted to stressing affordability as the centerpiece of their discussion — groceries, cost of living, and bringing prices down.
Mamdani, who will take office Jan. 1, echoed Trump’s assessment and told reporters the “productive meeting focused on a place of shared admiration and love, New York City.”
“We spoke about rent, we spoke about groceries, we spoke about utilities. We spoke about the different ways in which people are being pushed out, and I appreciated the time with the President,” Mamdani said. “I appreciated the conversation. I look forward to working together to deliver that affordability for New Yorkers.”
Prior to the election, Trump endorsed former Gov. Andrew Cuomo and warned he would withhold federal funding if Mamdani — a self-described democratic socialist — won. In one debate, Mamdani cast his campaign as a challenge to Trump, telling supporters that he was “Donald Trump’s worst nightmare,” CatholicVote previously reported.
Mamdani ran on a progressive platform that called for freezing rent, making public transit and childcare “free,” creating city-owned grocery stores, and raising taxes on the top 1% of earners.
Trump said some of Mamdani’s ideas “actually surprised me.”
“He wants to see no crime, he wants to see housing being built, he wants to see rents coming down,” Trump told reporters. “All things that I agree with.”
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