President Donald Trump’s first Oval Office meeting with New York City’s Mayor-Elect Zohran Mamdani was already shaping up to be a spectacle. Instead, the White House shut the doors, kept reporters out, and turned what could have been a charged public moment into a tightly controlled, private sit-down.
That decision is striking. Trump is known for inviting cameras into the Oval Office at the drop of a hat—especially when he’s hosting foreign leaders or political rivals. But Friday’s meeting with Mamdani, a 34-year-old Democratic socialist who beat the odds to win City Hall, was one the White House apparently had no interest in letting the public witness.
It’s not hard to guess why. Their relationship has been anything but warm.
Trump has spent months attacking Mamdani, branding him a “communist lunatic” and “not very smart,” falsely accusing him of being in the country illegally, threatening to arrest him, and vowing to cut off federal money to New York if he won. As recently as Wednesday, Trump took to Truth Social to declare, “Communist Mayor of New York City, Zohran ‘Kwame’ Mamdani, has asked for a meeting.”
Yet by Friday morning, the president appeared to be sanding down the edges. In a radio interview with Fox News’ Brian Kilmeade, Trump suddenly played the part of a man ready for a polite chat.
“He’s got a different philosophy. He’s a little bit different. I give a lot of credit for the run,” Trump said. “They did a successful run, and we all know that runs are not easy, but I think we’ll get along fine.”
He described the upcoming meeting as “quite civil.” And when asked whether he’d open the meeting to the press, he claimed, “I mean, it’s fine with me, I would think so, he’s a politician, so I don’t think he has a problem.”
According to the Daily Beast, however, his schedule told a different story: no press allowed.
For Mamdani, the sit-down is a campaign promise kept. He told reporters Thursday that his team had pushed for the meeting, saying he would talk to “anyone and everyone so long as it was to the benefit of the eight and a half million people who call this city their home.” His priorities are clear—he wants to push the president on New York’s affordability crisis.
He has never hidden his disdain for Trump, either. On election night, fresh off his upset win, Mamdani addressed Trump directly from the stage: “So Donald Trump, since I know you’re watching, I have four words for you: turn the volume up!” He followed with a blistering takedown, culminating in, “So hear me President Trump when I say this, to get to any of us, you will have to get through all of us.”
When Kilmeade played that clip for Trump on Friday, the president shrugged it off: “Well, I was hitting him a little hard too, in all fairness. Hard to be totally friendly toward the opponent.” Then came the tell: “I don’t know exactly what he means by ‘turn the volume up.’”
Both men, savvy performers for their very different audiences, kept up the theater leading into the meeting. Mamdani posted a cheerful selfie on a plane heading to D.C., then snapped photos with travelers at Reagan airport. Trump needled him online. Their bases, equally energized, followed every update.
But when the time came for the high-stakes face-to-face, the White House pulled the curtain. Asked why the meeting would be closed, officials dodged. Press secretary Karoline Leavitt pointed reporters back to Trump’s eventual remarks, whenever they might come, and then took her own shot at the incoming mayor.
“I will just add, it speaks volumes that tomorrow we have a communist coming to the White House because that’s who the Democrat Party elected mayor of the largest city in the country,” she said.
