MS NOW host Nicolle Wallace was taken aback after watching President Donald Trump’s gushing treatment of New York City’s Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani in front of the press on Friday night during Mamdani’s visit to the White House.
“Even with Putin, Trump didn’t go on for as long where he lavished that much praise, affection and admiration on anyone,” Wallace told her guest, “Fast Politics” podcast host Molly Jong-Fast, on Friday.
Trump congratulated Mamdani, a harsh and outspoken critic of the president, for his mayoral win during their highly anticipated meeting, praising him and offering words of encouragement. It was quite the shift from the tone Trump took during the mayoral race, when he labeled Mamdani a “communist lunatic.”
“The better he does, the happier I am, I will say,” Trump said Friday. “There’s no difference in party, there’s no difference in anything. And we’re going to be helping him to make everybody’s dream come true, having a strong and very safe New York. And congratulations, Mr. Mayor.”
Jong-Fast shared a theory with Wallace: Trump saw the popularity of Mamdani and his economics-focused messaging, and Trump “wants to get on that affordability train.”
“He sees his numbers. He knows inflation is plaguing him. I mean, maybe I’m ascribing too much sort of political acumen to him,” she said.
With Trump pushing lies about inflation and grocery prices, a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll shows that his Republican voters are beginning to slip away from him over his handling of the economy, sliding from an 87% approval rating among the group earlier this month to 82%.
“I think that it speaks to the talent, the political talent, the raw political talent that Zohran has, that he can go in and sit there and just make this guy his greatest cheerleader,” Jong-Fast said. “But I also wonder if he’s trying to get on that, you know, he ran as a populist. He said he was going to make things cheaper.”
Wallace agreed that Trump was “obviously tracking” Mamdani’s poll numbers.
“So Trump is endorsing Cuomo, is flipping Adams, or whatever the hell he did, with the Adams criminal bribery case at DOJ,” she continued. “And I wonder how those lawyers feel about ruining their integrity to spring Adams, when Trump was obviously in love with Mamdani the whole time.
“And the guy is sitting there saying, ‘You can call me a fascist or despot, you just answer the question.’” she added. “I’ve never seen him sort of care for his children, his vice president or his cabinet’s credibility the way he seemed committed to honoring Mamdani’s credibility.”