Trump-Mamdani political bromance gets even stranger after Gracie Mansion visit

BS BULLETIN:

President Trump spent about an hour with democratic socialist NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani at Gracie Mansion Monday.
The two agreed to step up White House-City Hall talks over a massive 12,000-home development at Sunnyside Yards in Queens.
Trump, who once called Mamdani a “100% Communist Lunatic,” now says the mayor has “great potential.”

Donald Trump had world leaders waiting in New York for the United Nations General Assembly Monday.

First, he had a date with his favorite socialist.

Trump traveled to Gracie Mansion for an hourlong meeting with New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, marking their third face-to-face meeting since Mamdani’s election.

And the strangest political relationship in America apparently remains very much alive.

Standing alongside Mamdani afterward, Trump reminisced about his own history at Gracie Mansion and the New York mayors he has known.

Some, Trump said, were great.

Others weren’t.

Then he turned to Mamdani.

“Hopefully you’re gonna be a great one,” Trump said. “You’re off to a start.”

Later, Trump went further.

“I certainly hope he will be a great mayor,” Trump said. “I want what’s good for New York, I want what’s good for the country.”

“He’s certainly got potential, got great potential.”

That would be a fairly ordinary presidential courtesy except for one small historical detail:

Trump spent part of the 2025 mayoral campaign calling Mamdani a “100% Communist Lunatic.”

Mamdani has called Trump a fascist.

Politics makes strange bedfellows. Apparently New York politics gives them a standing dinner reservation.

But Monday’s meeting produced something more substantial than another round of unlikely compliments.

Mamdani said the two agreed to establish a new level of talks between City Hall’s housing and operations teams and the White House over the proposed development of Sunnyside Yards in Queens.

The enormous project would construct a platform over the working rail yard and build a new neighborhood on top of it.

Mamdani says the proposal could produce 12,000 homes and 30,000 jobs.

There’s just one little complication.

Washington.

“You’re gonna need a lot of federal approvals and probably some federal money to do it,” Trump acknowledged.

Trump knows the site well. He told reporters he once owned a building in Sunnyside and noted that New York has been talking about developing the rail yards for decades.

“So maybe they have a shot at doing it,” Trump said.

The two also discussed immigration.

Mamdani pressed Trump over temporary protected status for Haitians, telling the president that Haitian immigrants are important to New York’s economy and workforce.

Trump made no public commitment to change federal policy but acknowledged that Mamdani “feels very strongly” about the issue.

Their increasingly cordial relationship is especially striking because it comes just weeks before the midterm elections, as Republicans nationally continue using democratic socialism as a campaign issue.

Trump, however, appears determined to separate his relationship with Mamdani from that larger political fight.

Mamdani is doing something similar.

“I will continue to have conversations with the president,” the mayor said after Trump left, “and frankly, anyone who can deliver relief to the people of this city.”

MY QUICK TAKE

Here is why this relationship is more politically interesting than all the Trump loves the socialist! jokes.

Both men understand something their respective political tribes occasionally forget: governing isn’t Twitter.

Mamdani can call Trump a fascist and still understand that his giant housing plan doesn’t get built if the federal government says no.

Trump can spend an election warning America about democratic socialism and still understand that the socialist mayor of his hometown controls a government he may need to work with.

Neither man changed his ideology Monday.

They changed the transaction.

And notice where they found common ground: not some grand philosophical compromise on capitalism versus socialism. A giant piece of New York real estate.

Of course they did.

Put Donald Trump and a democratic socialist in the same room long enough and apparently the socialist eventually starts talking to him about building 12,000 apartments.

Only in New York.