Some of President Donald Trump’s most enthusiastic supporters have spent the last few weeks smearing New York City’s mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani as a communist and a jihadist, and watched the President do the same.
Many expected the first Oval Office meeting between the pair to be a bloodbath; the ticker running on Fox News that morning read: “Showdown with Socialism.”
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]But, to their surprise, Trump appeared to be charmed by the fellow Queens native, promising after an unusually friendly meeting that he would be “helping him, not hurting him.”
“We agree on a lot more than I would have thought,” Trump told the gathered press at the meeting on Friday, during which he frequently broke into a beaming smile, with Mamdani by his side. “I think he’s going to surprise some conservative people, actually.”
Read more: ‘I Expect to Be Helping Him’: Trump Admits to Being Charmed By Mamdani in First Face-to-Face Meeting
In one exchange, after a reporter asked Mamdani whether he stood by his statement that Trump is a fascist, the President quickly interjected to defuse the tension: “That’s okay, you can just say yes,” he said, laughing and patting the mayor-elect on the elbow. “It’s easier than explaining.”
The affair has left some Trump supporters, who had joined the President in his fervent campaign against the 34-year-old democratic socialist, with a bitter taste.
Republican Congresswoman Elise Stefanik, whose district covers upstate New York, called Mamdani an “antisemitic, jihadist, Communist candidate” during his mayoral campaign. Trump himself called Mamdani “a 100% Communist Lunatic” after his win, and threatened to pull federal funds from the city.
But when Trump was asked if he agreed with Stefanik’s characterization of Mamdani as a jihadist in his Oval Office meeting, he replied: “No, I don’t. But she’s out there campaigning and you say things sometimes when in a campaign.”
Stefanik, a close ally of Trump’s who was nominated to be U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and recently launched a run for governor of New York, doubled down: “We all want NYC to succeed. But we’ll have to agree to disagree on this one.”
Another close ally of Trump’s, self-described Islamophobe and right-wing provocateur Laura Loomer, said on X: “Wild to allow a jihadist communist to stand behind the President’s desk in the Oval Office. Sad to see.”
“So we are just going to normalize communism?” she asked in another post, part of several on the topic.
New York City Council member Inna Vernikov was also disappointed by the lack of fireworks in the meeting.
“Tomorrow, @realDonaldTrump will SCHOOL @ZohranKMamdani. The public should be able to watch,” she wrote on X prior to the meetup.
After the meeting, her tone had shifted.
“It’s a good day for the American People when two leaders of such diametrically opposing views can come together for the betterment of our city and find common ground. But we should never KOSHER a Marxist with Jihadist aligned views,” she wrote.
“Mamdani should have been given a spanking at the White House. Disappointed that instead, he was legitimized,” she added.
On Fox, a variety of hosts appeared shocked and confused.
“Just one word—wow,” Fox News Anchor David Asman said live in response to the friendly meeting. Mamdani and Trump, he said, “looked like best friends.”
Fox News anchor Brian Kilmeade suggested Vice President J.D. Vance had reason to be “jealous,” calling the meeting “love-fest” and a “respect-fest.”
“I think the president wants to use [Mamdani] as a running mate. They got along fantastic,” he said.
In an interview with Fox News, Trump’s Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt appeared eager to reassure Republicans that the success of the meeting had more to do with the President’s ability to “sit across the table with everybody,” rather than flirting with communism.
“We know, and the president knows and the American people know that nationally, President Trump’s policies work, and capitalism works,” she told host Sean Hannity. “Who knows? Maybe Mayor Mamdani will go back to New York and maybe he learned a few things from President Trump today.”
Mamdani still thinks Trump is a fascist
Despite the big smiles in the Oval Office, Mamdani made it clear in the days that followed that he had not changed his opinion of the President.
Mamdani once said that, if elected, he would be “Donald Trump’s worst nightmare” and would use his power to “stop masked ICE agents from deporting our neighbors.”
Asked by Kristen Welker on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday whether he stands by his previous statements calling Trump a “fascist,” he responded: “That’s something that I’ve said in the past. I say it today.”
He continued, “And I think what I appreciated about the conversation that I had with the president was that we were not shy about the places of disagreement, about the politics that has brought us to this moment.”
But Mamdani pivoted back to affordability, as he did repeatedly in his meeting with Trump, an issue where the two found common ground.
“I found in the meeting that I had with the president a productive one and a meeting that came back again and again to the central themes of the campaign that we ran, the cost of housing, cost of child care, the cost of groceries, the cost of utilities,” he said in Sunday’s interview. “And it showed that this is an opportunity to now start to deliver so that people can do more than just aspire to struggle in New York City, but actually to be able to live there.”
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