But on Friday, the two leaders met as men in the White House’s Oval Office in an extraordinary sit-down that demonstrated their similarities more than their stark differences.

“We agree on a lot more than I would have thought …  I want him to do a great job, and we’ll help them do a great job,” Trump said about Mamdani, adding he would live in a Mamdani-led New York City. 

Despite repeatedly threatening to strip New York City of federal funds if Mamdani is elected, Trump appeared far more magnanimous. “I expect to be helping him, not hurting him, a big help, because I want New York City to be great. Look. I love New York City. It’s where I come from. I spent a lot of years there. Now I’m right here,” he said. 

Trump, notorious for branding Mamdani as a “communist,” even jokingly urged the incoming mayor to call him a fascist as reporters asked him to clarify his stance, as he had previously dubbed the president one, and declined to call him a “jihadist” despite Rep. Elise Stefanik’s (R-NY) insistence on attacking Mamdani. 

“No, I don’t but she’s out there campaigning, and you say things sometimes in a campaign,” Trump said about Stefanik, who is running for New York governor. “She’s a very capable person.”

The president and Mamdani sought to present a united front as they took questions from the press and downplayed their differences on issues such as immigration, Israel, and crime.

“There will be topics that we disagree on, I think we’ll probably come to a conclusion. And ultimately, he’ll convince me or I’ll convince him. You know it’s for the good of New York,” Trump said. 

The president, aware of the media attention the meeting attracted, also told reporters he hoped Mamdani and he would meet again in the future, while quipping that the mayor-elect could call him a “despot,” he name he used for the president during his campaign. 

“The press has eaten this thing up. I’ve had a lot of meetings with the heads of major countries—nobody cared,” he said. “For some reason, the press has found this to be a very interesting meeting.” 

For Democrats, such as party strategist Mike Nellis, Mamdani had “a lot of upside” by asking for this meeting with Trump. Mamdami, for example, repeated his campaign promises regarding affordability.

The meeting was “a golden opportunity to soften Trump on him a bit — and Trump is famously easy to win over in the moment,” according to Nellis, founder of digital marketing agency Authentic.org.

Democratic strategist Christopher Hahn echoed that, saying “[Mamdani] needs to open lines of communication with the president.”

Even if there had been a confrontation as there was during the meeting between Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in February, all Mamdani had to do was “keep calm and let Trump be Trump,” Nellis told the Washington Examiner.

“That dynamic plays extremely well for him in New York, where any federal attacks will just look like political retribution,” he said. “This is a smart play by Zoran with very little downside. He’s a disciplined, savvy communicator who doesn’t get rattled, so Trump’s brand of chaos [was not] going to throw him off his message.”

Nellis had a warning to Republicans: the GOP may be making “a real miscalculation” by elevating Mamdani. 

Mamdani got “a huge platform with a ton of people who’ve never seen or heard him before,” he said. “This could break wide open in his favor.”

Trump appeared to be mindful of the same politics, telling Fox News Radio’s Brian Kilmeade on Friday morning before the meeting that Mamdani is “a little bit different,” but predicted that the pair will “get along fine.” 

“Look, we’re looking for the same thing. We want to make New York strong,” he said. “I think it’s going to be quite civil. We’ll find out. You’ll be the first to know.”

Republican strategist Evan Siegfried agreed, contending people should remember that Trump and Mamdani “need one another desperately.” 

“They are the foil to one another with their respective bases and this is a symbiotic relationship,” Siegfried told the Washington Examiner. “Right now, Mamdani has to show that he has done everything he can to conduct or to get results from Washington in a civil and thorough manner before he resorts to throwing fire bombs, or verbal fire bombs that is, and I think the president does too.”

For Siegfried, Trump “is very keenly aware” that Mamdani and his policies not only infuriate his Republican base, but independent voters “look at stuff and are turned off by it.” 

To that end, Trump cannot “spend his powder too early” because Mamdani will be a useful “political villain” closer to next year’s midterms elections when voters are “going to have issues with Trump and his policies, and trying to hold Republicans accountable at the national level in federal elections.”

“Donald Trump can use Mamdani in New York as a wedge, and he can go and do things where he puts Democratic candidates between Mamdani and common sense, particularly on issues like immigration,” he said. “Mamdani is going to certainly pushback on Donald Trump’s immigration crackdowns, and I think that you’re gonna see an even bigger immigration crackdown here in New York City.”

Republicans embarked on the process of turning Mamdani into their next bogeyman well before the 34-year-old won his election earlier this month. But as soon as the results became clear, that campaign went into overdrive, complete with ads from the likes of the National Republican Congressional Committee in 49 battleground congressional districts.

“The socialist takeover is complete,” NRCC Spokesman Mike Marinella told reporters. “Radical socialist Zohran Mamdani’s win is the Democrat Party’s blueprint for America: defund the police, abolish ICE, and replace common sense with chaos. House Democrats own it, and we’ll make sure voters know it.” 

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Mamdani, underscoring his strength on social media that helped him dispatch the likes of embattled New York City Mayor Eric Adams and former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo to become the next mayor of the U.S.’s largest city, despite being a relative political newcomer, shared an image of himself en route to Washington, D.C.

When asked why he flew and did not take a “greener” train to the capital, Mamdani replied: “I will use every form of transit, and I want to make sure they are all affordable in NYC.”