New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani stood his ground on Sunday in calling Donald Trump a fascist, just days after a shockingly chummy meeting at the White House that ended in some policy agreements and unexpected praise by the president for the leftist leader whose candidacy he previously condemned.
Mamdani did not shy away from calling the president a fascist during his mayoral campaign, and doubled down during Friday’s meeting when a reporter asked if he still stands by that statement.
Trump interjected before Mamdani could answer, saying: “That’s OK, you can just say yes. It’s easier than explaining it, I don’t mind.”
“OK, yes,” the mayor-elect said with a smile as Trump patted his arm.
On Sunday, Mamdani was asked again if he still thinks Trump is a fascist.
“That’s something that I’ve said in the past. I say it today,” he told NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “And I think what I appreciated about the conversation that I had with the president was that we were not shy about the places of disagreement, about the politics that has brought us to this moment. And we also wanted to focus on what it could look like to deliver on a shared analysis of an affordability crisis for New Yorkers.”
The friendly partnership stunned the public, particularly after the White House and Republican allies repeatedly demonized Mamdani over his identities as a Muslim immigrant and a Democratic socialist. Some politicians, like Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), continue to do so.
The mayor-elect said that before the meeting, he mulled if establishing a “productive relationship” with Trump would help address the affordability issues that “New Yorkers stay up late at night thinking about.”
“So often in our politics we try and tell people what they should be worried about, what they should be concerned about,” Mamdani said.
“When you actually ask New Yorkers and you listen to them, you hear it come back to the issues that animated not just the conversation the president and I had with the press after our meeting, but frankly in the meeting itself,” he continued. “It was a conversation where we spoke about the need to deliver on this agenda.”