There’s nothing like a new bromance to get the creative juices flowing: Both Jimmy Kimmel and Seth Meyers outdid themselves with their comic analyses of the lovefest between President Donald J. Triump and New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani at the White House Nov. 21 – this after the two politicians traded the most abject insults amid Mamdani’s meteoric rise.
During the political/religious “discussion” that was the inevitable side dish of Thanksgiving at my conservative cousin’s house, he offered that Trump in no way liked Mamdani. That may be. His language of praise for the Muslim Democratic Socialist was conditional, while the radiantly smiling Mamdani turned down the wattage – except when he posed alone before a portrait of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, one of his heroes, and spoke of his message of affordability – and kept his threaded fingers in front of the lower half of his body in a self-protective gesture.
But considering how the press half of the meeting might’ve gone, a Zelenskyy “you don’t have the cards” smackdown, the Trump-Mamdani summit was a virtual mutual admiration society, with an emphasis on commonality or perhaps more accurately, common need.
The two kings of Queens ran populist campaigns on the cost of living. And while Trump may have left New York for Florida, he still has an attachment to his hometown – to say nothing of his business and real estate interests. Then there’s Wall Street, by whose tallies he measures his success with the assiduousness of a calorie counter.
For his part, Mamdani – the 34-year-old mayor-elect of a city that has seen its share of burnings, bombings, riots and protests in its 400-year history of reinvention – cannot afford to begin his administration with ICE and the National Guard ramping up their presence in the Big Apple. You can campaign all you want from the fringes, but you govern from the center, Trump being the exception that proves the rule. Mamdani needs to balance competing interests, and for that he needs federal dollars to continue to flow, which is probably one of the reasons he requested the meeting.
It may not have been lost on him either – it certainly couldn’t have been on Trump – that for all his ranting about people of color, the president likes dark, handsome Muslim men whom he considers winners – Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa and now the Ugandan-born Mamdani. Trump hinted constantly about President Barack Obama being an African-born Muslim. On Nov. 21, he had the real deal standing in the Oval Office next to him in the Elon Musk position. (For all Musk’s wealth and success with Tesla, he didn’t grasp at first that Trump would treat him the way he treats all Americans – as employees. Only foreign visitors get to sit as semi-equals in the gold chair to his right before the fireplace in the gilded Oval, where they all wear the same tense, plastered smile. {That would make a great documentary.)
There may have been other motives for Trump to cozy up to Mamdani. He may have wanted some of the younger man’s stardust to fall on him. But he also may have wanted to make his own supporters jealous. These have not been the best of times for Trump, with members of his Republican Party growing restless and rebellious. (See Marjorie Taylor Greene.) By making nice with Mamdani, Trump may have been reminding his followers that he’s still a master of unpredictability and that they underestimate him at their peril.