{"id":144758,"date":"2026-02-25T13:23:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-25T13:23:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/144758\/"},"modified":"2026-02-25T13:23:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-25T13:23:08","slug":"trump-gives-nice-guy-mamdani-a-state-of-the-union-shoutout","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/144758\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump gives \u2018nice guy\u2019 Mamdani a State of the Union shoutout"},"content":{"rendered":"

President Donald Trump gave a shoutout to New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani in the first State of the Union speech of his second term \u2013 and repeated a talking point on the city\u2019s snow response spread by<\/a> gubernatorial candidate Bruce Blakeman and other Republicans.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe new communist mayor of New York City, I think he’s a nice guy, actually\u201d Trump said <\/a>in the middle of his nearly two-hour speech at the U.S. Capitol. \u201cI speak to him a lot. Bad policy, but nice guy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump has disparagingly called the democratic socialist Mamdani \u201ca communist\u201d for months. But the pair had a remarkably friendly Oval Office<\/a> meeting in November and Mamdani has avoided directly antagonizing Trump as mayor. City Hall didn\u2019t immediately respond to a request for comment, but Mamdani has said he texts regularly<\/a> with the president.<\/p>\n

Trump provided some more antagonism Tuesday night, suggesting that Democrats like Mamdani are inconsistent for requiring two forms of ID and a social security card to get paid by the city for an emergency snow shoveling program while rejecting a proposal to require showing ID to vote.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cYet they don\u2019t want identification for the greatest privilege of all, voting in America,\u201d Trump said. New Yorkers are required to provide identification showing U.S. citizenship to register to vote, but do not have to show ID to cast a ballot.\u00a0<\/p>\n

His call to enact a national voter ID law received a standing ovation from Republicans, one of many throughout the night as Trump reviewed key pieces of their agenda, including reducing immigration \u2013 calling sanctuary cities such as New York \u201cdeadly\u201d \u2013 and the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” passed last year.<\/p>\n

With midterm elections coming up and Republicans fighting to keep the House, Trump focused on proposals to lower costs. And he argued thatDemocrats in Washington raised costs and then started campaigning by using the word \u201caffordability\u201d \u2013 the theme of Gov. Kathy Hochul\u2019s legislative agenda for two years running, as well as Mamdani\u2019s 2025 campaign.<\/p>\n

Trump said he signed an executive order to ban Wall Street investment firms from buying single-family homes<\/a> and asked Congress to make the ban permanent. “We want homes for people, not for corporations,\u201d the president said. \u201cCorporations are doing just fine.\u201d<\/p>\n

U.S. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer brought a union ironworker from Long Island to the president\u2019s address, among other guests. Other members of the New York delegation also tried to send a message with the guests,<\/a> including Rep. Dan Goldman who brought along a Lutheran pastor who\u2019s advocated for immigrants in detention in lower Manhattan.\u00a0<\/p>\n

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries remained seated throughout the majority of the State of the Union. While dozens of Democrats boycotted Trump\u2019s speech, including Reps. Jerry Nadler and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"President Donald Trump gave a shoutout to New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani in the first State of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":144759,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1626,153,9,11,10,49,51,50,60332,29576,82],"class_list":["post-144758","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-bruce-blakeman","tag-donald-trump","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-new-york-state","tag-new-york-state-headlines","tag-new-york-state-news","tag-state-of-the-union","tag-voter-id","tag-zohran-mamdani"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144758","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=144758"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144758\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/144759"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}