After months of buying and selling public barbs, the US president and New York Metropolis mayor-elect are set to satisfy in particular person.
United States President Donald Trump is poised to host New York Metropolis mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani for a gathering on the White Home, marking an about-face for a duo who’ve painted themselves as diametrically and ideologically opposed of their political visions for the nation.
On his social media platform Fact Social, Trump wrote late on Wednesday that Mamdani will go to the Oval Workplace on Friday in a publish that additionally falsely referred to as Mamdani a communist and positioned his center identify, Kwame, in citation marks.
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“Additional particulars to comply with!” the president added.
All through the marketing campaign that culminated in Mamdani’s historic November 4 election victory as town’s first Muslim mayor, the president zeroed in on Mamdani as a goal for public assaults, slamming the democratic socialist as a “communist”, mispronouncing his identify and threatening to chop off federal funding to New York if he received.
Trump even endorsed the Democrat Andrew Cuomo over the Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa within the closing hours earlier than the vote, telling his followers that Mamdani was a “FAILURE”.
Mamdani, for his half, has repeatedly linked the Trump administration to authoritarianism and portrayed his personal objectives as mayor – tackling the affordability disaster and assuaging earnings inequality – in direct distinction to the president’s lifelong chase of wealth and energy.
“If anybody can present a nation betrayed by Donald Trump find out how to defeat him, it’s the identical metropolis that gave rise to him,” Mamdani pledged in his election victory speech, referencing Trump’s New York roots. “And if there may be any method to terrify a despot, it’s by dismantling the very circumstances that allowed him to build up energy.”
Nonetheless, because the election earlier this month – which additionally noticed sweeping wins for Democrats in New Jersey and Virginia – Trump has signalled a willingness to defrost relations. In a speech to the American Enterprise Discussion board in Florida, the president appeared to stroll again his funding risk whilst he railed towards communism.
“We’ll assist him, we’ll assist him. We would like New York to achieve success. We’ll assist him a bit of bit, possibly,” he stated.
Quite a few Republicans and MAGA supporters have launched vitriolic and racist assaults on Mamdani within the build-up to the mayoral election and after Mamdani swept to victory.
Days earlier than the election day, Mamdani gave an emotional speech addressing “racist, baseless assaults” from his opponents. Talking exterior a mosque within the Bronx, Mamdani criticised opponents for bringing “hatred to the forefront”, noting that their Islamophobia not solely affected him because the Democratic nominee for mayor but in addition shut to at least one million Muslims dwelling in New York.
Earlier this week, Mamdani informed reporters his group contacted the White Home as a result of he had made a “dedication that confirmed a willingness to satisfy with anybody and everybody, as long as it’s for the profit” of New Yorkers.
“The president ran a marketing campaign the place he spoke a few promise to ship cheaper groceries, a promise to scale back the price of dwelling,” Mamdani stated. “We’re seeing his actions … resulting in the precise reverse impact for New Yorkers. I’ll go to make the case, to the president, and to anybody, frankly, that these are the sorts of issues we have to change.”
