Here’s what to expect when Trump and Mamdani meet Friday: NPR

This combination of photos taken on November 19, 2025 shows President Trump on October 24, 2025 (L) and newly elected New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani in New York City, on November 12, 2025.

Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/Charly Tribelleau/AFP via Getty Images

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Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/Charly Tribelleau/AFP via Getty Images

President Trump will meet in New York Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani at the White House Friday afternoon in the Oval Office, the first time the two have come face to face.

While previous New York mayors met with sitting presidents, Mamdani and Trump have already clashed before this meeting. Trump has repeatedly tried to portray Mamdani, a 34-year-old democratic socialist, as too radical and extreme for the city the president long called home. In the president’s announcement of the Truth Social meeting, Trump called Mamdani a “communist.”

It is a narrative that Mamdani has resolutely backtracked on, pledging to implement his agenda aimed at lowering the cost of living.

“My team has reached out to the White House to organize this meeting because I want to work with everyone to make life more affordable for the more than eight and a half million people who call this city home,” Mamdani told reporters on Thursday. “I have many disagreements with the president, and I believe we must be relentless and pursue all avenues and encounters that can make our city affordable for every New Yorker.”

Trump has since been an outspoken opponent of Mamdani upset victory during the Democratic primary in June, saying he would arrest Mamdani if ​​he disrupted ICE operations in the city and threatening to withdraw the city’s federal funding if he won in November.

“Look, we don’t need a communist in this country, but if we do have one, I will watch over him very carefully on behalf of the nation,” Trump told reporters last summer, shortly after Mamdani’s primary victory. Mamdani responded directly to Trump in his victory speech on election night. “Donald Trump, since I know you’re watching, I have four words for you: turn up the volume,” he said, adding, “To reach any of us, you’re going to have to pass all of us.”

Over the course of just a few months, Mamdani’s candidacy for mayor turned from a long-shot bid into a national movement, generating interest far beyond New York in his progressive ideas, including freezing rents in rent-stabilized units, making city buses free and opening city-run supermarkets; and skepticism about how the new mayor will find the money to pay for it all.