President Donald Trump heaped praise on New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani after their meeting at the White House, congratulating him on his win and saying he was \u201cvery confident that he can do a very good job.\u201d<\/p>\n
Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office after their closed-door conversation, Trump \u2014 who had previously labeled the incoming mayor a \u201ccommunist lunatic\u201d<\/a> and accused him of antisemitism \u2014 struck a much different tone Friday.<\/p>\n What You Need To Know<\/p>\n President Donald Trump heaped praise on Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani after their meeting at the White House Friday, congratulating him on his win and saying he was \u201cvery confident that he can do a very good job” \u201cI met with a man who is a very rational person. I met with a man who really wants to see New York be great again,\u201d the president said.<\/p>\n \u201cI feel very confident that he can do a very good job. I think he\u2019s going to be, I think he\u2019s going to surprise some conservative people, actually,\u201d he added. \u201cAnd some very liberal people, he won\u2019t surprise, because they already like him.\u201d<\/p>\n Mamdani traveled to Washington, D.C. with newly appointed chief of staff<\/a> Elle Bisgaard-Church and senior adviser Morris Katz<\/a> Friday morning for the highly anticipated meeting, a day after he told reporters he planned to discuss the city\u2019s affordability crisis<\/a> with the president.<\/p>\n Standing next to a seated Trump in the Oval Office Friday afternoon, Mamdani said the two spoke about rent, utilities and grocery prices, as well as \u201cthe different ways in which people are being pushed out\u201d of the five boroughs.<\/p>\n \u201cI appreciated the meeting with the president,\u201d the mayor-elect said, describing the discussion as \u201ca productive meeting focused on a place of shared admiration and love, which is New York City, and the need to deliver affordability to New Yorkers.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI think both President Trump and I, we are very clear about our positions and our views, and what I really appreciate about the president is that the meeting that we had focused not on places of disagreement, which there are many, and also focused on the shared purpose that we have in serving New Yorkers,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd frankly, that is something that could transform the lives of eight and a half million people who are currently struggling under a cost-of-living crisis, with one in four living in poverty,\u201d he added. \u201cAnd the meeting came back again and again to what it could look like to lift those New Yorkers out of struggle and start to deliver them a city that they could do more than just struggle to afford it but actually start to live in it.\u201d<\/p>\n The meeting between the two men marked their first face-to-face encounter. Prior to their discussion, Trump had indicated that with Mamdani as mayor, he would take steps to ensure New York City would not get as much federal funding as it otherwise would.<\/p>\n After their talk Friday, Trump said his administration would work to help the incoming mayor.<\/p>\n \u201cI think you\u2019re going to have, hopefully, a really great mayor,\u201d he said. \u201cWe agree on a lot more than I would have thought. I think he\u2019s, I want him to do a great job, and we\u2019ll help him to do a great job.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe better he does, the happier I am, I will say. There\u2019s no difference in party, there\u2019s no difference in anything, and we\u2019re going to be helping him to make everybody\u2019s dream come true,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n Asked if he, as a billionaire, would feel comfortable living in New York City under a Mamdani administration, Trump didn\u2019t hesitate.<\/p>\n \u201cNo, I feel very comfortable,\u201d he responded. \u201cI would feel very, very comfortable being in New York, and I think much more so after the meeting.\u201d<\/p>\n Being the mayor of New York City, Trump added, \u201cis a big deal.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI always said, you know, one of the things I would have loved to be someday is the mayor of New York City. Being the mayor of New York, and especially now, because I think you\u2019re at, really a turning point one way or the other,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cIt could go great, or it can go in a different direction, and I think you really have a chance to make it great.\u201d<\/p>\n In a statement Friday evening, Gov. Kathy Hochul said she welcomed Trump’s “renewed commitment today to New York’s success and his acknowledgment of our shared priorities: lowering costs and improving public safety.”<\/p>\n “I look forward to working with President Trump and Mayor-Elect Mamdani to deliver for New Yorkers. But as I’ve always said, I’ll work with the President when it benefits New Yorkers, and I’ll fight like hell when our values are at stake,” she wrote in a statement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"President Donald Trump heaped praise on New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani after their meeting at the White…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":48317,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[117,109,25,8889,14499,9,24,55,54,12,110,56,108,87,380,27,200],"class_list":["post-48316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-app-for-your-consideration","tag-app-local-state-politics","tag-app-top-stories","tag-bernadette-hogan","tag-maya-rajamani","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-headlines","tag-new-york-city-news","tag-news","tag-nnt","tag-ny","tag-ny-state-of-politics-blog","tag-politics","tag-spectrum-news-staff","tag-top-stories","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48316","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=48316"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48316\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48317"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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Standing next to a seated Trump in the Oval Office, Mamdani said the two spoke about rent, utilities and grocery prices, as well as \u201cthe different ways in which people are being pushed out\u201d of the five boroughs
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The meeting between the two men marked their first face-to-face encounter<\/p>\n