The president hosted the mayor-elect at the White House – and seemed enamoured of his fellow New Yorker
The highly anticipated Oval Office meeting between Donald Trump and Zohran Mamdani – the mayor-elect of New York City, the US president’s beloved home town – was hardly the combustible tête-à-tête many had predicted. For the moment at least, the two New Yorkers appeared friendly, smiling and cautiously optimistic about the work they might accomplish together.
Neither revived their hot campaign trail rhetoric, in which they cast each other as diametrically opposed political adversaries. Trump had labeled Mamdani a “100% Communist Lunatic” and urged voters to back his opponent, the former New York governor Andrew Cuomo. In turn, Mamdani had assailed Trump as a “despot” and pledged to be the president’s “worst nightmare”. Here are 5 things that stood out from their surprising display of political bonhomie:
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Trump and Mamdani <3 New York
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Trump would live in Mamdani’s New York
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Trump dismisses Republican attacks on Mamdani
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Trump deflected pointed questions from conservative journalists to Mamdani
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Adversaries turned affordability agenda partners
Trump campaigned on affordability, especially of groceries. Sure, from him it was a line of bullshit, but if Mamdani came out saying that was brilliant and he was excited to be a part of it…well, one way to sway a narcissist is convince them the thing you want was actually based on THEIR idea. I presume that becomes pretty fucking easy when the narcissist in question is so riddled with dementia that they don’t even remember what they had for breakfast that morning.
Another thing is, narcissists absolutely LOVE being seen as a hero. So combine the above with claiming “New York will adore YOU for it”, mix in that nostalgia you mentioned, and add the simple fact that Mamdani is charismatic as fuck, and there you go.