New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani confirmed he will travel to Washington on Nov. 21 to meet President Donald Trump at the White House, adding he will work with “anyone” if it helps ease the city’s affordability crisis.
“I will be heading to Washington, DC, tomorrow to meet with President Trump in the White House,” Mamdani told reporters at a press conference on Nov. 20. The democratic socialist called the meeting “customary” for an incoming mayor of New York City due to its significance as America’s largest city and the mutual reliance.
Mamdani said it is “more critical than ever given the national crisis of affordability, one that New Yorkers know very well across these five boroughs, and the specific challenge many cities are facing with balancing public safety against steps taken by [the Trump] administration.”
Mamdani said his team initiated the talks.
“My team reached out to the White House to set up this meeting because I will work with anyone to make life more affordable for the more than 8 and a half million people who call this city home,” he said.
The president, a native New Yorker, announced the meeting earlier this week on Truth Social.
“Communist Mayor of New York City, Zohran ‘Kwame’ Mamdani, has asked for a meeting,” he wrote, adding that it would take place in the Oval Office on Friday, Nov. 21.
At the White House on Thursday, press secretary Karoline Leavitt declined to preview the discussion but said “our teams are arranging those details.”
“It speaks volumes that tomorrow, we have a communist coming to the White House, because that’s who the Democrat Party elected as the mayor of the largest city in the country,” she said.
The visit shows Trump is “willing to meet with anyone and to talk to anyone and to try to do what’s right on behalf of the American people, whether they live in blue states or red states or blue cities,” Leavitt said. She added that New York had become “much more left than I think this president ever anticipated in his many years of living in New York himself.”
Before the mayoral election, Trump criticized Mamdani’s progressive platform as unfeasible and endorsed his opponent former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat who ran as an independent, and threatened to cut federal funding for the city if Mamdani won. Mamdani campaigned as an opponent of Trump’s agenda but said Thursday that his priority now is using every channel to address the cost of living.
“I have many disagreements with the president and I believe that we should be relentless and pursue all avenues and all meetings that could make our city affordable for every single New Yorker,” he said. “I intend to make it clear to President Trump that I will work with him on any agenda that benefits New Yorkers. If an agenda hurts New Yorkers, I will also be the first to say so.”
Asked if he is nervous about his first visit to the Oval Office, Mamdani said he views it as “an opportunity to make the case for New Yorkers.”
“When we speak about an affordability crisis, we’re speaking about one in four New Yorkers living in poverty. One in five struggling to afford $2.90 to ride the bus,” he said. “New Yorkers for whom the daily acts of life are becoming increasingly harder to afford. And that’s an opportunity I have to make the case to President Trump, to the White House, as to what it means to have to suffer through this affordability crisis and what it means to make it even more difficult to do so.”
