Trump-charmer Mamdani turns raging president into docile guest at Gracie Mansion

Donald Trump once again heaped praise on Zohran Mamdani during an appearance at Gracie Mansion on Monday following an hourlong closed-door meeting between the president and New York City’s mayor.

Trump, who spent the day raging against his political enemies as he faced an avalanche of legal blowback and criticism for his latest threats to media outlets, called the mayor’s residence a “beautiful place” that “feels like a home” during brief and peculiar remarks to reporters, showing off their surprisingly cordial relationship despite their public antagonism.

“I have seen some great ones and some not so great ones. So hopefully, you’re going to be a great one,” Trump said to the democratic socialist mayor. “I’ll be able to say you’re going to be a great one, and you’re off to a start.”

Later, the president said he wants “what’s good for New York” and “what’s good for the country.”

“So, if I had a choice of having him be a bad mayor or horrible mayor, I don’t want that,” he said. “I want [him] to be a great mayor, and he has certainly got potential, great potential.”

Trump’s appearance marked the first presidential visit to the mayoral residence in decades; the last sitting president to visit the property was Ronald Reagan — in 1981.

Mamdani said the pair discussed “the city we are both so fortunate to serve.”

Their conversations largely stick to “the same topics: how to improve the lives of New Yorkers, and how to build a better, stronger New York,” Mamdani said.

They discussed federal support for a large-scale housing development in Queens as well as the Trump administration’s revocation of Temporary Protected Status for Haiti, which has made thousands of immigrant Haitians in New York vulnerable to removal from the U.S. to a country they fled in the wake of disaster, violence and instability.

“The mayor feels very strongly about it and he did bring it up,” Trump told reporters.

The president will remain in Manhattan through Tuesday for his address to the United Nations General Assembly, but his first stop in the city was to the mayoral residence, marking his third in-person meeting with the mayor within the last year.

Mamdani has frequently stated that he has been open to discussing New York City issues with the president, and that their previous interactions are largely singularly focused on what the mayor has said are the city’s best interests.

“When it comes to the president, we continue to have a conversation about how best to deliver for the city, and that is a conversation that has been done in person, it’s been done over the phone, and it will continue so long as either of us have the ability to deliver for this city,” the mayor told reporters last week.

The president, meanwhile, has smeared Mamdani as a communist and threatened to withdraw federal support for the city in between bouts of praise for the mayor, who Trump has called a “great mayor” and a “nice guy.”

In February, after Mamdani’s intervention, the Trump administration released a Columbia University neuroscience student hours after she was arrested inside her campus apartment.

Mamdani, who was meeting with Trump at the White House that same day, said he had shared his concerns about her arrest. Over a phone call that afternoon, the president told him she would be “released imminently,” according to the mayor.

But after Mamdani’s endorsed candidates in congressional races saw primary victories in June, Trump demanded his allies to “stop this horrible threat of cancer that's permeating our country called communism.”

In July, in a 14-minute address that didn’t mention Trump by name, Mamdani marked the nation’s 250th anniversary with a rebuke of his administration’s mass deportation efforts and the “forces of division” that undermine the nation’s founding principles.

Mamdani condemned what he called “small,” “weak” and “unoriginal” ideologies that have sought to define America within “the arena of supremacy, where only a select few are allowed freedom, where not all are created equal.”

Their relationship appeared to deteriorate further over the last several months as the president accelerated his anti-immigration agenda. Last week, New York City joined a lawsuit challenging the administration's new public charge rule that threatens to deny green cards and visas to immigrants based on their use of public benefits.

Minutes before arriving at Gracie Mansion on Monday, Trump called the official mayoral residence “one of my favorite places in the World.”

“I spent lots of hours there over the years, with some great Mayors, some average Mayors, and some bad Mayors,” he wrote on Truth Social. “It will be interesting to see how it looks now, invited by Mayor Mamdani. Look forward to it.”