{"id":202606,"date":"2026-04-19T15:14:24","date_gmt":"2026-04-19T15:14:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/202606\/"},"modified":"2026-04-19T15:14:24","modified_gmt":"2026-04-19T15:14:24","slug":"obama-and-mamdani-read-and-sing-with-new-york-preschoolers-in-first-meeting-barack-obama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/202606\/","title":{"rendered":"Obama and Mamdani read and sing with New York preschoolers in first meeting | Barack Obama"},"content":{"rendered":"

Barack Obama<\/a> met with Zohran Mamdani<\/a> for the first time on Saturday at a childcare center where the former Democratic US president and mayor of New York City<\/a> read to preschoolers and led a sing-along.<\/p>\n

The meeting comes as Mamdani, a democratic socialist who marked his 100th day in office just over a week earlier, is also trying to build a working relationship with Donald Trump<\/a> \u2013 Obama\u2019s Republican presidential successor.<\/p>\n

Obama and Mamdani did not take questions after reading the book Alone and Together to the children \u2013 and leading a sing-along of The Wheels on the Bus.<\/p>\n

Obama, a standard-bearer for the Democratic party, has offered to be a sounding board for Mamdani, 34. Mamdani\u2019s star power, youth and progressive agenda has made him stand out in Democratic politics.<\/p>\n

Mamdani took office in January after a campaign centered on making New York<\/a> City a more affordable place to live, centering his agenda on refocusing the vast power of government toward helping the city\u2019s struggling working class.<\/p>\n

Mamdani has met twice with Trump at the White House \u2013 in November and February \u2013 to discuss issues affecting New York, from where the president is originally from.<\/p>\n

Despite those friendly meetings, their relationship has shown signs of strain recently, with Trump posting on social media Thursday that Mamdani was \u201cDESTROYING New York\u201d with his tax policies and threatened to pull federal funding for the city.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Barack Obama met with Zohran Mamdani for the first time on Saturday at a childcare center where the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":202607,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[9,24,55,54,56],"class_list":{"0":"post-202606","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-city","8":"tag-new-york","9":"tag-new-york-city","10":"tag-new-york-city-headlines","11":"tag-new-york-city-news","12":"tag-ny"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202606","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=202606"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202606\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/202607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=202606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=202606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=202606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}