Zohran Mamdani met with Donald Trump in Washington on Thursday, during an unannounced trip to the nation’s capital.
The New York mayor said he had a “productive” meeting with the US president and he was “looking forward to building more housing in New York City” in a post on X.
Joe Calvello, the mayor’s chief spokesperson, told the Guardian that Mamdani presented the president a possible project in New York City that would “deliver one of the biggest federal investments in housing in 50 years”.
Calvello added that the mayor proposed a housing project “with an estimated 12,000 units”, and Trump “appeared enthusiastic” about the idea, but offered no further details about the timeline, location or next steps for the project.
On his social media, Mamdani also shared a picture of himself standing next to a grinning Trump at the Resolute desk in the Oval Office. The president is seen holding up two headlines from the New York Daily News. One is the now-infamous front page after former Republican president Gerald Ford refused to provide a federal bailout for New York City in 1973, as it was on the verge of bankruptcy. The other appears to be a fake printout which shows a picture of the president and the headline “Trump to City: Let’s Build”, with a line underneath that reads: “Trump Delivers 12,000+ Homes; Most Since 1973”.
Mamdani’s spokesperson confirmed that his team mocked up the front pages of the newspapers for the mayor to present to the president.
Mamdani also said he spoke to the president on the phone after the meeting to discuss the arrest of Elmina Aghayeva, a Columbia University student who was detained by federal immigration agents on Thursday.
“He has just informed me that she will be released imminently,” Mamdani said. The White House did not reply to the Guardian’s request for comment.
Aghayeva was arrested by officers who reportedly misrepresented themselves by posing as New York City police officers looking for a missing child in order to gain entry to a residential building to make the apprehension. However, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the parent agency of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), denied agents impersonated the NYPD, and appeared to suggest that Aghayeva is no longer a student.
Mamdani’s spokesperson said the mayor “asked the president directly” for Aghayeva to be released, and handed “a list of four additional students who had been detained in New York City” to the president, asking him to also consider dismissing their cases.
Earlier, an official in the New York mayor’s office confirmed Mamdani’s Thursday meeting with Trump to the Guardian, but did not comment on the agenda. Neither the mayor nor the president’s public schedules listed the meeting.
The sit-down comes just days after Trump said he was in-touch with Mamdani regularly, during his record-breaking State of the Union address on Tuesday.
“The new communist mayor of New York City, I think he’s a nice guy, actually,” Trump said of the democratic socialist. “I speak to him a lot. Bad policy, but nice guy.”
This is the second in-person meeting for the two New Yorkers, following an unexpectedly cordial summit in November, after Mamdani won the mayoral election in a landslide victory. Throughout the mayor’s campaign, Trump denigrated Mamdani’s platform and character, referring to him as a “communist lunatic” and “total nut job” on social media. He even pushed New Yorkers to vote for the former Democratic governor Andrew Cuomo, who ran for mayor as an independent.
Since taking office, Mamandi – who once promised to be “Donald Trump’s worst nightmare” – has done little to antagonize the president. He has also commented sparingly on administration policies that could affect New York, particularly Trump’s routine threats to withhold federal funding from so-called sanctuary cities.
On Wednesday, when asked about how frequently he communicates with the president, Mamdani said they “have conversations that are always focused on how to keep the city moving forward”.
Trump was surprisingly effusive while speaking to reporters after his sit-down with the mayor late last year, and complimented his sweeping election victory. The president extolled how the Mamdani “came out of nowhere” and praised his campaign and staff.
“We agree on a lot more than I would have thought,” Trump said at the time. “I want him to do a great job, and we’ll help them do a great job.”
Alice Speri contributed reporting
