Trump To Meet With Mamdani At The White House

Authored by Arjun Singh and Joseph Lord via The Epoch Times,

President Donald Trump will meet New York Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani at the White House today.

“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,” Trump announced on Truth Social.

Mamdani, the self-described democratic socialist whose campaign to run America’s most populous city drew national attention, is set to take office on Jan. 1, 2026. The mayor-elect has already sparred publicly with Trump, who has threatened to reduce federal funding to the city.

Mamdani commented on the planned meeting during a Nov. 20 press conference, describing it as “customary.”

“I will be heading to Washington, D.C., tomorrow to meet with President Trump in the White House,” Mamdani told reporters.

Mamdani said the meeting is “more critical than ever given the national crisis of affordability, one that New Yorkers know very well across these five boroughs, and the specific challenge many cities are facing with balancing public safety against steps taken by [the Trump] administration.”

Mamdani said his team arranged the meeting.

“The mayor-elect will be coming to the Oval Office, so our teams are arranging those details,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Nov. 20 when asked about the upcoming meeting.

Mamdani and Trump, who are both from Queens, have spent months publicly criticizing each other, ever since Mamdani defeated former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo for the Democratic nomination.

Trump has repeatedly called Mamdani a “communist” due to his professed affinity for democratic socialism, and threatened to withhold federal funds from the city’s government if Mamdani seeks to implement some of his campaign promises.

Mamdani, by contrast, has attacked Trump’s nationalist, populist, and conservative initiatives during his second term, such as his effort to remove illegal immigrants from the United States.

During his campaign, Mamdani vowed to use city resources to provide legal counsel to foreign nationals facing deportation.

When asked whether there was anything Mamdani could do to calm Trump’s concerns, Leavitt declined to answer.

“I won’t get into the president’s thinking on it. I think you’ll all hear from him directly,” she said.

Once he takes office, Mamdani will be among the highest-profile elected officials in the United States as the leader of a city that’s home to more than 8 million people, America’s wealthiest city by GDP.

The job has often been described by occupants as being the “second toughest job in America,” behind only the U.S. presidency.