During an extraordinarily cordial meeting at the White House Friday, President Trump showered NYC Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani with compliments and vowed to be “a big help” to his incoming administration — sparking perhaps the most improbable bromance in American politics.

The sympatico tone was a shocking turnaround for Trump, who has for months smeared Mamdani as “a communist” and threatened to slash federal funding for New York, flood the city with ICE agents and take other punitive steps in response to the incoming mayor’s election. Trump has even toyed with the idea of deporting Mamdani, a naturalized U.S. citizen born in Uganda.
But speaking to reporters in the Oval Office on Friday afternoon after a more than hour-long sitdown with Mamdani, Trump did not reiterate his deportation musings, said he’s no longer looking to make good on the funding threat and admitted he was “actually surprised” by how “rational” the soon-to-be mayor is and how much they agree on.

The city receives nearly $8 billion in federal funding every year for a variety of programs. Trump’s reversal on that front gives Mamdani a big sigh of relief as he prepares to take office Jan. 1 with hopes of enacting an ambitious affordability agenda.

Caption of picture : Mamdani at white house

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