{"id":62348,"date":"2026-05-08T12:03:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-08T12:03:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/62348\/"},"modified":"2026-05-08T12:03:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-08T12:03:09","slug":"trump-and-mamdani-are-smart-to-make-nice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/62348\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump and Mamdani are smart to make nice"},"content":{"rendered":"

Political opposites President Donald Trump<\/a> and New York City<\/a> Mayor Zohran Mamdani<\/a> continue to have a surprisingly friendly relationship. In an interview<\/a> on Meet the Press last month, Mamdani called Trump \u201chonest, direct, and productive,\u201d not the kinds of words Democrats typically use about Trump. When asked about the unusual nature of their relationship, Mamdani attributed it to the fact that they are both New Yorkers<\/a>, saying, \u201cNew York City holds a very special place for him as well as for me. We\u2019re both from the same city.\u201d<\/p>\n

These friendly comments come in the wake of their initial November meeting in the White House<\/a>, which shocked observers by turning into an unexpected lovefest. Even though the men had called each other quite critical names over the course of Mamdani\u2019s successful mayoral run, including \u201ccommunist,\u201d \u201cfascist,\u201d and \u201cdespot,\u201d they were all smiles when they met in person. Things remained friendly after the meeting, with the two men maintaining an ongoing texting relationship<\/a>. The men were both genial and cooperative in a February meeting on housing investment in New York, and Mamdani got Trump to release a Columbia University student from ICE detention. Even though Trump has privately admitted to being irked by Mamdani on occasion, the mayor\u2019s latest comments show that their friendship remains intact.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the Trump-Mamdani friendship shouldn\u2019t be so surprising. Trump, for his part, has long been known to be a bear in public but disarmingly gracious behind closed doors. As for Mamdani, presidential historian and former Mario Cuomo aide Harold Holzer told me that the mayor \u201chas figured out that flattery will get him everywhere \u2014 and Trump is lapping it up.\u201d It is also clearly not lost on Mamdani that the federal government spends $337 billion in New York, which is over $200 billion more than New York\u2019s own annual budget. Without that money going to Medicaid, welfare, public housing, transit, and education, New York would be in even more dire financial straits than it already is.<\/p>\n

\"PresidentPresident Donald Trump talks to reporters after meeting with New York Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, left, at the White House, Nov. 21, 2025. (Evan Vucci\/AP)<\/p>\n

All of this is true, yet there is another reason for their odd friendship, rooted in their apparent knowledge of New York political history. Both of these savvy politicians seem to recognize the reality that feuds between mayors of New York and presidents can be dangerous on both sides. In the past, fighting between New York mayors and presidents has often caused problems for both players, even when both men were of the same party.<\/p>\n

Republican President Richard Nixon viewed New York Mayor John Lindsay as one of his \u201cenemies\u201d and offered to have Lindsay wiretapped for the benefit of New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller, who hated Lindsay.\u00a0In 1970, Nixon was angry with Jewish protests against French President George Pompidou over France\u2019s stopping the shipment of planes to Israel. As part of the protests, Lindsay and Rockefeller boycotted a dinner with Pompidou. Nixon had to apologize to Pompidou publicly, and Nixon privately grumbled about the protesters, \u201cLet \u2018em get their planes from Rockefeller and Lindsay.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the Lindsay side, Holzer recalls that \u201cLindsay criticized the Nixon administration over Vietnam, and Nixon reacted by increasing his hostility towards New York.\u201d According to New York City historian and Lindsay biographer Vincent Cannato, part of the problem in this case was that \u201cLindsay and Nixon were both vying for the moderate wing of the GOP. They really were kind of competitors.\u201d Lindsay noisily quit the Republican Party in 1971, blasting the Nixon administration in the process for a \u201cretreat from the Bill of Rights.\u201d In addition, one of Lindsay\u2019s aides, Francis O\u2019Brien, later served as Chief of Staff to House Judiciary Chairman Peter Rodino during the Watergate investigation that ultimately sank Nixon\u2019s presidency.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"History(Examiner graphic; Anthony Quintano; Metropolitan Transportation Authority)<\/p>\n

Nixon was replaced by Gerald Ford. New York was facing bankruptcy at the time, and Mayor Abe Beame sought a bailout from the federal government. According to Holzer, Ford\u2019s \u201cadministration had no confidence in Beame\u201d and therefore wanted to impose financial conditions on New York. This standoff led to the legendary October 1975 Daily News headline, \u201cFord to City: Drop Dead.\u201d Mamdani demonstrated his knowledge of this history, and his certainty that Trump knew it as well, by gifting a mockup of that famous front page to Trump in February.<\/p>\n

The bailout controversy did not serve either Ford or Beame well. Holzer notes that \u201cFord and his people infamously treated Beame as if he wasn\u2019t a functional leader,\u201d even though Ford was warned that his tough stance could hurt him electorally in New York State. In 1976, Ford lost a squeaker of an election to Jimmy Carter, losing New York State in the process, and blamed the Daily News headline for his loss. The next year, Beame lost the Democratic primary in his reelection bid, ending his troubled tenure.<\/p>\n

Democratic congressman Ed Koch, the man who beat Beame, himself tormented the man who defeated Ford, Jimmy Carter. In contrast to Mamdani today, Koch recognized that it was smart politics for the mayor of America\u2019s most Jewish city to be a big supporter of Israel. Carter, however, was an Israel critic, and some of his top aides were even worse, putting the Carter administration in Koch\u2019s crosshairs. At one point, Koch referred to five top Carter officials as an \u201canti-Israel gang of five,\u201d which was an unflattering reference to the murderous \u201cGang of Four\u201d heading Maoist China\u2019s Cultural Revolution. Carter was not happy with the comment, noting in his diary that Koch had been acting like \u201ca fanatic.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

According to Holzer, Koch risked the loss of federal aid to New York \u201cby fighting so personally with President Carter over Israel, but he deserves credit for standing on principle as a Jewish American.\u201d In doing so, though, he alienated Carter, who confronted Koch at a fundraiser and told him, \u201cYou have done me more damage than any man in America.\u201d\u00a0 Carter was right about that: He was unsuccessful in his reelection bid against Ronald Reagan, losing New York State in the process.<\/p>\n

Even though Koch and Reagan were of different parties, they got along much better than Koch and Carter did. According to Cannato, \u201cReagan and Koch had a decent relationship, but I think it was relatively tricky for Koch because of the partisan leanings of the city.\u201d Koch handled this challenge by taking an approach that he later characterized as, \u201cI never voted for him, but I loved him.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Republican Rudy Giuliani and Democrat Bill Clinton also understood the fact that a New York mayor and an American president of different parties could get along. Clinton noted in his memoir that he and Giuliani had \u201ccordial\u201d relations, at least until Giuliani briefly ran against Clinton\u2019s wife Hillary for Senate. Giuliani, citing health problems, pulled out of the race, thereby staving off a potential Clinton-Giuliani confrontation. Both New York and the country boomed under their administrations.<\/p>\n

In recent years, New York State has become a solidly blue state, so its decision in presidential election years is no longer a question. But presidents and New York mayors can still make trouble for one another. Eric Adams caused headaches for Joe Biden\u2019s administration by calling out Biden\u2019s open borders policy, saying, \u201cThe president and the White House have failed this city.\u201d Adams\u2019s open criticism of a president from his own party irked the Biden team, which removed Adams from a Biden campaign advisory board. Biden\u2019s Justice Department also investigated corruption charges against Adams, an investigation that helped make Adams\u2019 reelection bid unviable.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a little odd that the New York City mayor has such political power and resonance, given that the job is a terminal position whose inhabitants have a poor track record in seeking higher office. Many New York mayors have long aspired to more, but none have progressed beyond Gracie Mansion. Lindsay had his sights on the presidency, but his candidacy never got anywhere. Koch defeated Mario Cuomo for mayor, but Cuomo turned around and beat him when Koch sought the governorship in 1982. Rudy Giuliani briefly led in the polls for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination, but his career has been on a rapid decline ever since. Mike Bloomberg spent $1 billion<\/a> to win 55 delegates for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020, about $18 million per delegate. Despite some talk of Mamdani as a future presidential candidate, it\u2019s unlikely that his extreme progressivism would gain purchase outside of deeply blue New York City.<\/p>\n

WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY JR. AT 100: THE IRREPLACEABLE POLICEMAN OF THE RIGHT\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

As Mamdani\u2019s\u00a0Daily News\u00a0headline gift to Trump shows, Trump and Mamdani are clearly aware of some, if not all, of this history. That knowledge appears to play into their unexpectedly friendly relationship. Still, no one knows what they really feel about one another, or how long this might last.<\/p>\n

According to Holzer, \u201chistory shows us these truces are short-lived, because ultimately the Mayor has to represent the city\u2019s interests, and the president, the national interest.\u201d With those interests in mind, both men seem to have recognized the political benefits of putting a friendly face on things \u2014 at least for now.<\/p>\n

Tevi Troy (@tevitroy) is a senior fellow at the Ronald Reagan Institute and a senior scholar at Yeshiva University\u2019s Straus Center. He is the author of five books on the presidency, including, most recently, The Power and the Money: The Epic Clashes Between Commanders in Chief and Titans of Industry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Political opposites President Donald Trump and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani continue to have a surprisingly friendly…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":62349,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[148],"tags":[12,565,1857,20776,7072,1419,560,33799,479,553],"class_list":{"0":"post-62348","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-zohran-mamdani","8":"tag-donald-trump","9":"tag-eric-adams","10":"tag-history","11":"tag-magazine-features","12":"tag-michael-bloomberg","13":"tag-new-york","14":"tag-new-york-city","15":"tag-rudy-giuliani","16":"tag-washington-d-c","17":"tag-zohran-mamdani"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@people\/116538861784812558","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62348","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62348"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62348\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}