On Friday, President Trump and New York’s mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani held a masterful press conference in the Oval Office. As the fellow triumphant underdogs met and praised each other, a genuine admiration was apparent between the two men.
“I think he’s going to surprise some conservative people, actually,” Trump beamed at White House reporters. Mamdani noted that he and Trump have a lot in common, especially when it comes to affordability: “We spoke about the different ways in which people are being pushed out, and I appreciated the time with the president,” he said.
While Mamdani has repeatedly proclaimed Trump to be a “fascist,” and Trump has referred to him as “my little Communist”, they refrained from calling each other names as the cameras rolled.
• You can call me fascist: the Trump-Mamdani bromance
In fact, Mamdani pointed out that “one in ten” voters who backed him also voted for Trump. “I’m OK with that,” Trump said. They took turns patting each other’s backs, and for a moment, our country felt unified.
Traditional pundits and political tribalists were flabbergasted. The Atlantic writer Michael Powell shallowly reduced the meeting to Trump’s hunger for glory, writing: “Trump always and ever loves winners, whether a Saudi crown prince, a billionaire businessman, or, apparently, a democratic socialist mayor fresh off an underdog win.” Some were downright angry. The hard-right political activist Laura Loomer tweeted: “So we are just going to normalise communism?”
Zohran Mamdani, the New York mayor-elect, shares some of his voter base with Trump
ADAM GRAY/BLOOMBERG/GETTY IMAGES
But it was clear from the meeting that neither of them really felt this way, despite the political rhetoric. If Mamdani really thought “Trump is Hitler,” there was no way he would ever meet him. If Trump really thought Mamdani was the Stalin of New York, he would not have told the press he’d feel fine living in the city under his leadership.
So what is really going on here?
• Katy Balls: Trump’s love-in with NYC mayor-elect has America asking ‘is Mamdani a Republican?’
The friendly meeting didn’t surprise me one bit, because the future of our politics is not left v right. It is populism v the establishment. Trump and Mamdani represent two sides of the same coin.
Neither the establishment on the left or the right offer solutions to the pain Americans are facing. From Missouri to New York, young people feel they will never have families or buy a home. Jobs have been shipped overseas and an ever-increasing underclass has been priced out of a middle class life.
The Kamala Harris and Lindsey Graham types in our country barely recognise this truth, nor have they offered any tangible solutions.
In fact, while Trump and Mamdani were chumming it up in the White House, old guard establishment figures like Harris, the Bush Family and Rachel Maddow were at Dick Cheney’s funeral — an apt metaphor for the political reality of the future.
During the Oval Office meeting, Trump astutely observed that “Bernie Sanders and I agreed on much more than people thought… many of the Bernie Sanders supporters voted for me.”
He’s right.
Before Sanders’ extreme shift to the left in 2020, many of his 2016 presidential campaign policies aligned with Trump’s. He was pro-tariffs, anti-mass illegal immigration; he was against the exporting of American manufacturing overseas, and before 2012, Sanders was a rare Democrat who, being from Vermont, was pro-gun.
But after Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and “The Squad” came along, many of Sanders’ original populist stances got lost in a wave of “abolish ICE” and “defund the police” rhetoric. It’s no wonder he did well in states where Trump beat Hillary Clinton in 2016, and, subsequently, many of his voters have ended up voting for Trump.
Sanders’ story shows why it’s important for the left to moderate on cultural issues, especially if they want to build a populist movement that can win nationally like Trump. And though it’s hard for many to understand, two such opposing factions can appeal to the same voters. Just look at this guy: a 55-year old two-time Trump voter in New York, dressed in “Maga for Mamdani” gear, who reportedly also voted for the mayor-elect. “This’ll be the first time I’m voting for a Democrat,” he said. “I like his policies.”
Please enable cookies and other technologies to view this content. You can update your cookies preferences any time using privacy manager.
Enable cookiesAllow cookies once
Even the longstanding Democratic strategist James Carville is jumping on the populism train, writing in a New York Times op-ed that: “It is time for Democrats to embrace a sweeping, aggressive, unvarnished, unapologetic and altogether unmistakable platform of pure economic rage. This is our only way out of the abyss.”
Carville points out this can only be accomplished if the left moderates itself on cultural issues.
In the Oval Office, Mamdani did just that. He was quick to assert that he’d keep the New York police department headcount where it stands, at 35,000 officers. He also went from demanding we “abolish ICE” to agreeing that local police officers would work with ICE on the deportations of illegal immigrants who were found to have committed any of the 170 crimes the NYPD deems serious. This language is a massive departure from typical progressive rhetoric about immigration.
And Mamdani said his vision for tax reform wasn’t about taxing white people more, but about taxing higher-income households of all races.
But it’s not just the left that needs to tone down its rhetoric.
• Niall Ferguson: No, liberals, Donald Trump’s US is far from a dictatorship
Populism continues to be a rising force on the right, especially in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s death. The hard-right streamer Nick Fuentes, who has a history of making wildly transgressive comments about women, Jewish people and minorities, has built his own extreme version of identity politics among his internet-based movement, the “Groypers”.
Just as the left cannot build a populist coalition with national appeal by demonising white people, the right will never build a large identitarian movement that excludes non-whites, Jewish people and women.
Posing together under a portrait of Franklin D Roosevelt
The true path to a populist coalition with sustained power relies on a colour-blind, class-based framework. Rather than blaming whites or minorities, politicians on both sides need to target elites and help the common man.
The posing of Trump and Mamdani in front of FDR’s portrait wasn’t just a photo opportunity, it points the way to an optimistic future focused on jobs and affordability. Just as FDR used the government to create transformative programs that are still with us today, an FDR figure could emerge from either party in this moment of American crisis. What we saw on Friday was two leaders, who sometimes appeal to the same people, working together on the issues that really matter to everyday Americans.
That’s what I call progress.