The mayor-elect says he asked for the Oval Office meeting and will back any part of the president’s agenda that helps make the city more affordable.
New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani has confirmed that he will travel to Washington on Nov. 21 to meet President Donald Trump at the White House, noting that he will work with “anyone” if it helps ease the city’s affordability crisis.
“I will be heading to Washington … tomorrow to meet with President Trump in the White House,” Mamdani, a democratic socialist, told reporters at a news conference on Nov. 20.
He called the meeting “customary” for an incoming mayor of the United States’ largest city.
“[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,” he said.
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 [8.5 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, noting that it would take place in the Oval Office on Nov. 21.
At the White House on Nov. 20, press secretary Karoline Leavitt declined to preview the discussion but said that “teams are arranging those details.”
“It speaks volumes that tomorrow, we have a communist coming to the White House, because that’s who the [Democratic] Party elected as the mayor of the largest city in the country,” she said.
“[The visit shows that 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 that New York City has become “much more left than … this president ever anticipated in his many years of living in New York himself.”
By Chase Smith
