After spending the last several months warning that Zohran Mamdani posed an existential threat to New York City, President Donald Trump ended his first face-to-face meeting with the mayor-elect stressing common goals and trading praise.

“I feel very confident that he can do a good job,” Trump said Friday afternoon in the Oval Office. “I think he is going to surprise some conservative people actually.”

In a striking turnabout, Trump and Mamdani, who had lobbed labels like “communist” and “despot” at each other during a mayoral campaign filled with vitriol, nodded when the other spoke and smiled at each other supportively. But they also sidestepped questions that might have highlighted their most polarizing positions.

Mamdani, standing beside Trump, called their meeting “productive” and s

See Full Page