Zohran Mamdani and Donald Trump walked side by side out of Gracie Mansion on Monday afternoon, pausing every so often to look one another in the eye. It was yet another display of the easy rapport between the two men that has confounded expectations ever since the president smiled and touched his hand to the mayor’s arm in the Oval Office in November.
But when the unlikely duo arrived at the podium to address reporters about the closed doors meeting they had just had, they seemed to have very different sets of priorities.
“Each time the president and I speak, it is about the same topics,” Mamdani said. “How to improve the lives of New Yorkers, and how to use the power of government to take on the cost of living crisis, to grow our economy, and to build a better, stronger New York.”
“Well, thank you very much, Mr. Mayor,” Trump said as he began his own remarks with a reflection about the grandeur of Mamdani’s residence. “It’s a special place, a beautiful place when you go inside.”
They were looking out over the East River as police boats passed by, tucked away in a serene corner of Manhattan’s Upper East Side made even quieter by a Secret Service-orchestrated security perimeter. Trump’s chief of staff Susie Wiles and communications adviser Margo Martin paced the porch behind the two men. (Mamdani said the meeting included Wiles and his chief of staff Elle Bisgaard-Church.) The meeting, Mamdani explained, primarily concerned the possibility of an ambitious plan to build new housing in Trump’s hometown of Queens, but the president quickly turned his attention to the Manhattan-raised mayor’s official residence. “It was very nice inside, beautifully kept,” Trump said. “And it’s a very, very representative place of New York.”
It’s one way to account for the president’s visible affection for Mamdani: the mayor represents a vision of New York success and popularity in a city where Trump long chased recognition and renown before decamping to Florida. By that token, the setting bore special significance to Trump, who said he had encouraged Mamdani to live in Gracie Mansion despite any perceptions of its luxuriousness. Mamdani seemed to understand the appeal: “I invited the president to come to Gracie Mansion,” he told reporters. “And he had also remarked to me in prior conversations about how many memories he has of this as a home for prior mayors.” And there was plenty with which to impress a president who’s devoted much of his term to ballroom renovations and gilding the Oval Office. “There’s a cannonball from the Revolutionary War,” Mamdani pointed out. “There’s a fireplace from the residence where Aaron Burr died after his duel with Alexander Hamilton.”
