THE DEVIL YOU KNOW

Mamdani Addresses Awkward ‘Fascist’ Oval Office Moment

The mayor-elect says he didn’t meet with the president “to make a point or make a stand,” but to “deliver for New Yorkers.”

Zohran Mamdani has spoken out about his unexpected love fest with Donald Trump, stressing that he still considers the MAGA leader a “fascist” and a “despot.”

“Everything that I’ve said in the past, I continue to believe,” the New York City mayor-elect told NBC’s Meet the Press Sunday. “I’m not coming into the Oval Office to make a point or make a stand. I’m coming in there to deliver for New Yorkers.”

After trading fierce insults both ahead of and after Mamdani’s sweeping victory at the polls earlier this month, Mamdani and Trump stunned the nation Friday with a White House meeting that could not, by any measure, have been more cordial.

Mamdani had indeed previously slammed the president for what he described as a dismantling of U.S. democracy and a wider “war on working people,” with Trump threatening to arrest and deport the “100% Communist Lunatic.”

Their sitdown was initially scheduled to be held behind closed doors, but appeared to have gone so well that Trump later invited press in for questions as he sat beaming beside the mayor-elect.

At one point during that post-meet conference, reporters asked Mamdani if he stood by his prior characterizations of Trump as a “fascist.” The president quickly interceded on his behalf, telling Mamdani, “That’s ok, you can just say it. It’s easier, it’s easier than explaining it.”

“After President Trump said that, I said, ‘Yes’,” Mamdani told NBC Sunday. “That’s something I’ve said in the past and I say today. And I think 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 has brought us to this moment, and we also wanted to focus on what it could look like to deliver on a shared analysis of an affordability crisis for New Yorkers.”

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Though their political views could not differ more, critics have nevertheless noted a number of similarities over the past several months between Trump and Mamdani’s respective political modus operandi.

Both leaders ran their media-savvy campaigns on a populist platform, leveraging a deep charisma and a perceived “outsider” status to engage voters otherwise disillusioned with the political establishment. They have also provoked visceral opposition from their respective critics, turning that polarization to their advantage in framing themselves as an alternative to mainstream politics.

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Fawning Trump Says Call Me a Despot to Mamdani in Full TACO

Sarah Ewall-Wice

The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House and Mamdani’s representatives for comment.

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