New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani wasn’t empty-handed when he met with President Donald Trump at the White House in February, which may have helped his pursuit of building more housing in the Big Apple.
The mayor, 34, appeared on the Thursday, October 1 episode of Theo Von‘s This Past Weekend podcast and discussed how he’s working with the commander in chief, 80, on Sunnyside Yard — a housing development project in Queens — recalling how he “pitched” his idea to Trump at the White House in February and brought two magazine covers as a gift.
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“I brought him a mockup of a newspaper. There was a famous Daily News newspaper headline … it said ‘Ford to New York: Drop Dead.’ And I brought him that, and I brought him a mocked-up version where it says ‘Trump to New York: Let’s build,'” Mamdani shared.
“Like, this is what the future could look like,” he added about the message he was trying to get across to the billionaire.
The newspaper Mamdani was putting his own twist on was from 1975, when President Gerald Ford refused to help the city amid a financial crisis. Also, on the cover of the mayor’s mockup, it read that Trump “Backs new era of housing,” and “Trump delivers 12,000+ homes, most since 1973,” per a photo shared on X by Mamdani.
Mamdani’s efforts and persistence in pushing for the housing project seemed to have worked, as he revealed: “On this last meeting at Gracie Mansion, he agreed, OK, let’s set up high-level meetings between your housing and operations team and our White House about how we can move forward on this.”
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