NEW YORK (The Thursday Times) — President Donald Trump will meet New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani at Gracie Mansion on Monday, marking the first time Trump has travelled to see Mamdani on his own turf, as the president visits the city for the United Nations General Assembly.
Mamdani has visited Trump twice previously at the White House, once shortly after his November 2025 election victory, and again in February this year, but Trump had not yet made the reverse trip to New York. “Mayor Zohran Mamdani will meet with President Donald Trump at Gracie Mansion on Monday, September 21,” a Mamdani spokesperson said. His communications director, Anna Bahr, said the meeting “will focus on issues affecting New York City and New Yorkers.” The White House confirmed the meeting but did not offer further details.
The meeting comes despite a public relationship that has swung between open hostility and unusual warmth. Trump spent months during Mamdani’s mayoral campaign branding him a “100% Communist Lunatic,” threatening to deport him (Mamdani, born in Uganda, is a naturalised American citizen) and to withhold federal funding from the city if he won. Trump’s own party has since placed Mamdani at the centre of its messaging ahead of November’s midterm elections, casting Democrats broadly as “communists.” As recently as April, Trump wrote on Truth Social that Mamdani was “DESTROYING” New York, in response to the mayor’s support for a proposed surcharge on homes valued above $5 million with no primary resident present.
Their face-to-face meetings, however, have told a different story. At their first meeting at the White House in November 2025, Trump was asked to affirm Mamdani’s past description of him as a “fascist,” and after a pause, laughingly told the mayor he could say yes. At their February meeting, Mamdani presented Trump with a mock New York Daily News front page reading “Trump to City: Let’s Build,” a deliberate riff on the paper’s famous 1975 headline “Ford to City: Drop Dead,” referencing President Gerald Ford’s threat to veto federal financial assistance to New York. Mamdani’s aides said the gift was meant to illustrate the support new federal housing investment could generate in the city.
