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Trump offers ‘surprising’ take on NYC Mayor-elect Mamdani during Oval Office ‘lovefest’

November 22, 2025 | | Print Article

Those who were expecting fireworks when New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani got together with President Donald J. Trump at the White House were sorely disappointed when the high-stakes meeting turned into a “lovefest” instead.

The Democrat upstart who shocked the system by running on openly socialist ideas based much of his insurgent campaign on attacking Trump, a winning strategy with the base that easily won the election to head up the nation’s biggest city over hapless former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, the establishment candidate who was begrudgingly endorsed by the president.

Trump had previously branded the Ugandan-born Muslim as a “communist lunatic,” but if there were any lingering hard feelings, they weren’t seen in Friday’s news conference from the Oval Office, where the two took questions from the media with the leader of the free world offering up a surprising take on Mamdani.

“I think he wants to make it greater than ever before,” Trump said of Gotham’s incoming leader. “And if he can, we’ll be out there cheering. I’ll be cheering for him.”

“He’s different than your typical guy,” Trump said, adding that the charismatic young Democrat “has a chance to really do something great for New York.”

“I 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 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,” Mamdani said.

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“We have one thing in common. We want this city of ours that we love to do very well,” Trump said, agreeing with the Big Apple’s new leader.

The president also expressed the opinion that he’s confident that Mamdani will do a good job and that he’s going to surprise conservatives.

In a lighthearted moment, the mayor-elect was asked by a reporter whether he still thinks that Trump is a fascist, a term freely thrown about by leftists as a slur against their political enemies.

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“That’s OK,” Trump jumped in, saving the mayor-elect from an uncomfortable moment. “You can just say yes. It’s easier than explaining it. I don’t mind.”

“I’ve been called much worse than a despot, so it’s not that insulting,” Trump added.

“POTUS has a lot of good moments but this is an all-timer,” Vice President JD Vance wrote in a post to X, sharing a clip of the memorable exchange.

The meeting was described by the New York Post as a “love fest” with the paper quoting one NYC political insider who called it a “kiss-ass fest.”

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“He’s got views out there, but who knows maybe we’re going to see what works, or he’s going to change,” Trump said of the incoming mayor. “Also, we all change. I change a lot. Changed a lot from when I first came to office.”

Chris Donaldson
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