Donald Trump, Zohran Mamdani
TOI Correspondent from Washington:
A frisson of excitement is coursing through Washington DC and New York City after President Donald Trump announced that he will be meeting Zohran Mamdani in the White House on Friday at the request of the New York City Mayor-elect, the first Indian-origin person voted to administer the global entrepot.Trump himself confirmed the engagement on his social media account on Wednesday night, posting “Communist Mayor of New York City, Zohran “Kwame” Mamdani, has asked for a meeting. We have agreed that this meeting will take place at the Oval Office on Friday, November 21st. Further details to follow!”
Mamdani’s office said the mayor-elect, who will take office on January 1, requested the meeting to advocate “for the needs of working-class New Yorkers,” citing specific concerns around federally subsidized housing programs, immigrant protections, and funding for reliable and affordable public transit.“I want to just speak plainly to the president about what it means to actually stand up for New Yorkers, and the way in which New Yorkers are struggling to afford the city. And frankly, cost of living is something that I heard time and time again from New Yorker,” Mamdani told MS Now.Despite dissing the self-described Democrat Socialist as a “100% Communist lunatic” and predicting rack and ruin for the Big Apple under a liberal-left dispensation, Trump has expressed grudging admiration for Mamdani in private, referring to him as a “talented politician,” and calling him “slick” and “a good talker” according to one media report.The US President has often shown in the past he can be pragmatic and accommodating when he engages adversaries in a personal setting. After Mamdani’s remarkable victory in the ground zero of capitalism, Trump is also said to have indicated he would “help him a little bit maybe,” because “we want New York to be successful.”Still, the meeting will mark a rare interaction between the MAGA Republican president and the new leftist icon of foreign extract, drawing attention both for its policy implications and for the stark contrast in political ideology and public style between the two men.Although cast as a rising star who could eclipse the Democratic establishment and take on Trump as an ideological opposite, Mamdani cannot run for the White House, not being US born (he was born in Kampala, Uganda). His middle name “Kwame,” which Trump put in quotes to presumably highlight his foreign origins, is taken from the Ghanaian revolutionary Kwame Nkrumah.Indeed, the one issue on which the two leaders diverge widely is immigration. Mamdani has been a vocal advocate for expanded immigrant protections at the state level, including access to legal services and limitations on cooperation between local agencies and federal enforcement bodies. At times, Trump has gone ballistic against Mamdani on this issue, once warning he could be arrested if he kept his pledge to “stop masked ICE agents from deporting our neighbors” if elected mayor.Other policy differences between the two are well-chronicled. Mamdani, who like Trump is also from Queens borough, has built his political profile on a platform of tenants’ rights, transit investment, and progressive taxation. Trump, by contrast, has emphasized deregulation, private-sector–led development, and stricter immigration controls. Trump’s father, Fred Trump, was a landlord who was accused of racial profiling to turf out tenants. Among his victims was the iconic singer Woody Guthrie, who even wrote a song titled “Old Man Trump” about his experience.
