After months of trading public barbs, the US president and New York City mayor-elect are set to meet in person.<\/p>\n
United States President Donald Trump is poised to host New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani for a meeting at the White House, marking an about-face for a duo who have painted themselves as diametrically and ideologically opposed in their political visions for the country.<\/p>\n
On his social media platform Truth Social, Trump wrote late on Wednesday that Mamdani will visit the Oval Office on Friday in a post that also falsely called Mamdani a communist and placed his middle name, Kwame, in quotation marks.<\/p>\n
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\u201cFurther details to follow!\u201d the president added.<\/p>\n
Throughout the campaign that culminated in Mamdani\u2019s historic November 4 election victory<\/a>\u00a0as the city\u2019s first Muslim mayor, the president zeroed in on Mamdani as a target for public attacks, slamming the democratic socialist as a \u201ccommunist\u201d, mispronouncing his name and threatening to cut off federal funding<\/a> to New York if he won.<\/p>\n Trump even endorsed<\/a> the Democrat Andrew Cuomo over the Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa in the final hours before the vote, telling his followers that Mamdani was a \u201cFAILURE\u201d.<\/p>\n Mamdani, for his part, has regularly linked the Trump administration to authoritarianism and portrayed his own goals as mayor \u2013 tackling the affordability crisis and assuaging income inequality \u2013 in direct contrast to the president\u2019s lifelong chase of wealth and power.<\/p>\n \u201cIf anyone can show a nation betrayed by Donald Trump how to defeat him, it is the same city that gave rise to him,\u201d Mamdani pledged in his election victory speech, referencing Trump\u2019s New York roots. \u201cAnd if there is any way to terrify a despot, it is by dismantling the very conditions that allowed him to accumulate power.\u201d<\/p>\n Still, since the election earlier this month \u2013 which also saw sweeping wins<\/a> for Democrats in New Jersey and Virginia \u2013 Trump has signalled a willingness to defrost relations. In a speech to the American Business Forum in Florida, the president appeared to walk back his funding threat even as he railed against communism.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ll help him, we\u2019ll help him. We want New York to be successful. We\u2019ll help him a little bit, maybe,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Numerous Republicans and MAGA supporters have launched vitriolic and racist attacks<\/a> on Mamdani in the build-up to the mayoral election and after Mamdani swept to victory.<\/p>\n Days before the election day, Mamdani gave an emotional speech addressing \u201cracist, baseless attacks\u201d from his opponents. Speaking outside a mosque in the Bronx, Mamdani criticised opponents for bringing \u201chatred to the forefront\u201d, noting that their Islamophobia not only affected him as the Democratic nominee for mayor but also close to one million Muslims<\/a>\u00a0living in New York.<\/p>\n Earlier this week, Mamdani told reporters his team contacted the White House because he had made a \u201ccommitment that showed a willingness to meet with anyone and everyone, so long as it is for the benefit\u201d of New Yorkers.<\/p>\n \u201cThe president ran a campaign where he spoke about a promise to deliver cheaper groceries, a promise to reduce the cost of living,\u201d Mamdani said. \u201cWe are seeing his actions \u2026 leading to the exact opposite effect for New Yorkers. I will go to make the case, to the president, and to anyone, frankly, that these are the kinds of things we need to change.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After months of trading public barbs, the US president and New York City mayor-elect are set to meet…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":45943,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[153,9,24,55,54,12,56,901,2272],"class_list":{"0":"post-45942","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-city","8":"tag-donald-trump","9":"tag-new-york","10":"tag-new-york-city","11":"tag-new-york-city-headlines","12":"tag-new-york-city-news","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-ny","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-us-canada"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45942","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=45942"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45942\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}