NEW York City’s Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani says he still believes United States President Donald Trump is a fascist, despite a surprisingly warm meeting between the two politically polarised men at the White House this week.
“That’s something that I’ve said in the past; I say it today,” Mamdani, a self-described democratic socialist, said about the Republican president in an interview aired on NBC News on Sunday.
Mamdani’s comments came two days after he met with Trump, setting aside months of mutual recriminations and promising to cooperate on the city’s future
Trump, who grew up in New York, called Mamdani a “100% Communist Lunatic” in a social media post following the incoming mayor’s election victory, and Mamdani has said Trump was attacking democracy.
During their meeting, Trump, who had previously suggested the Ugandan-born New Yorker should be deported, even came to his rescue as the two addressed reporters at the White House.
When a journalist asked Mamdani if he continued to view Trump as a fascist, the president stepped in.
“That’s OK. You can just say it. That’s easier,” Trump told Mamdani. “It’s easier than explaining it. I don’t mind.”
Mamdani elaborated his stand further in the NBC interview.
“[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 have brought us to this moment,” he said.
“I found the meeting that I had with the president a productive one and a meeting that came back again and again to the central themes of the campaign that we ran: the cost of housing, cost of childcare, the cost of groceries, the cost of utilities.”
After threatening to cut federal funding to the US’s biggest city and to send in the US National Guard, Trump praised Mamdani’s historic election win during their meeting, saying he could do a “great job”.
“We’ve just had a great … very productive meeting. We have one thing in common: we want this city of ours that we love to do very well,” he said later. “We are going to be helping him to make everybody’s dream come true: having a strong and very safe New York.”
Kevin Hassett, director of the National Economic Council, said on the CNN news programme State of the Union that Trump wants to work with everybody who cares about the future of the American people.
“We’re at times disagreeing about policies,” Hassett said, “but I think that the objective of making life better for everybody is something that a lot of people share on the Democratic and Republican side.”