Trump and Mamdani are meeting for the first time today. What to know

President Donald The President has called New York City’s Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani a “100% Communist Lunatic” and a “total nut job.” Mamdani has called The President’s administration “authoritarian” and described himself as “Donald The President’s worst nightmare.”

So their first-ever meeting, scheduled for Friday at 3 p.m. EST at the White House, could be a curious and combustible affair.

Despite months of casting each other as prime adversaries, the Republican president and new Democratic star have also indicated an openness to finding areas of agreement that help the city they’ve both called home.

Mamdani, a democratic socialist who takes office in January, said he sought the meeting with The President to talk about ways to make New York City more affordable. The President has said he may want to help him out — although he has also falsely labeled Mamdani as a “communist” and threatened to yank federal funds from his hometown.

But for both men, the meeting offers opportunities beyond any areas of potential bipartisan agreement.

The two men are convenient political foils for each other, and taking the other one on can galvanize their supporters.

The President loomed large over the mayoral race this year, and on the eve of the election, endorsed independent candidate and former Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo, predicting the city has “ZERO chance of success, or even survival” if Mamdani won. He also questioned the citizenship of Mamdani, who was born in Uganda and became a naturalized American citizen after graduating from college, and said he’d have him arrested if he followed through on threats not to cooperate with immigration agents in the city.

Mamdani beat back a challenge from Cuomo, painting him as a “puppet” for the president, and said he would be “a mayor who can stand up to Donald The President and actually deliver.” He declared during one primary debate, “I am Donald The President’s worst nightmare, as a progressive Muslim immigrant who actually fights for the things that I believe in.”

The president, who has long used political opponents to fire up his backers, predicted Mamdani “will prove to be one of the best things to ever happen to our great Republican Party.” As Mamdani upended the Democratic establishment by defeating Cuomo and his far-left progressive policies provoked infighting, The President repeatedly has cast Mamdani as the face of Democratic Party.

For Mamdani, a sit-down with the president of the United States offers the state lawmaker who until recently was relatively unknown the chance to go head-to-head with the most powerful person in the world.

The meeting gives The President a high-profile chance to talk about affordability at a time when he’s under increasing political pressure to show he’s addressing voter concerns about the cost of living.

But that’s if the meeting doesn’t turn rocky.

A chance for some Oval Office drama

It was not immediately clear whether cameras will be allowed into the meeting. The President’s daily schedule said it will be private, but the president often invites in a small “pool” of reporters at the last minute.

The president has had some dramatic public Oval Office faceoffs this year, including an infamously heated exchange with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in March. In May, The President dimmed the lights while meeting with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and played a four-minute video making widely rejected claims that South Africa is violently persecuting the country’s white Afrikaner minority farmers.

A senior The President administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe internal discussions said The President had not put a lot of thought into planning the meeting with the incoming mayor — but said The President’s threats to block federal dollars from flowing to New York remained on the table.

Mamdani said Thursday that he was not concerned about the president potentially trying to use the meeting to publicly embarrass him and said he saw it as a chance to make his case, even while acknowledging “many disagreements with the president.”

If the president does use the meeting as a public confrontation, Mamdani may be uniquely ready for it.

He, like The President, was a relative political outsider who rose to victory with a populist message that promised a break from the establishment, known for his savvy navigation of the spotlight and a distinctive use of social media.

Mamdani, who lives in Queens — where The President was raised — also has shown a cutthroat streak. During his campaign, he appeared to borrow from The President’s playbook when he noted during a televised debate with Cuomo that one of the women who had accused the former governor of sexual harassment was in the audience. Cuomo has denied wrongdoing.

The moment evoked The President’s tactics before a debate with Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016, when he appeared with accusers of her husband, former President Bill Clinton, who denied the accusations against him.

—Michelle L. Price, Associated Press

Associated Press writers Aamer Madhani and Anthony Izaguirre contributed to this report.

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