President Donald Trump and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani are set to meet Monday at Gracie Mansion, the mayor’s official residence, as the two continue a strange back-and-forth of public feuding and occasional cooperation.
The meeting comes as Trump is in New York for the United Nations General Assembly. He’ll head back to Washington on Wednesday to receive Chinese President Xi Jinping for a state visit.
Trump and Mamdani remain sharply divided on immigration enforcement. Tensions have escalated since federal officials announced that ICE arrested more than 2,100 people across New York during a monthlong crackdown called “Operation Rotten Apple,” a tally reported earlier this month.
Mamdani’s administration has joined a coalition lawsuit fighting a new Trump administration “public-charge” rule that scraps Biden-era standards for how immigration officials weigh an applicant’s potential use of public benefits.
“If you are a citizen, or an individual seeking humanitarian relief like asylum, these changes will not affect you,” Mamdani said at a news conference last week. “The new public charge rule not only sweeps aside more than a century of established law, it is intentionally vague as a means of creating uncertainty and fear to isolate immigrant New Yorkers.”
Despite the immigration clashes, the two men have found room to work together. Trump first met with the self-described socialist mayor last November, saying Mamdani could “surprise some conservative people” and adding, “The better he does, the happier I am.”
Their most recent sit-down, on Feb. 26 in the Oval Office, was notably cordial. Mamdani used the meeting to pitch Trump on a massive New York City housing plan, seeking more than $21 billion in federal grants to build 12,000 affordable homes along with parks, schools, health clinics and union jobs. Mamdani called the meeting “productive.”
Trump has also mixed praise with insults. In his State of the Union address in February, he told the country: “The new communist mayor of New York City, I think he’s a nice guy, actually. I speak to him a lot. Bad policy, but nice guy.”
But the goodwill hasn’t lasted long between meetings. In April, a day after Gov. Kathy Hochul unveiled a Mamdani-backed proposal to tax New York City second homes valued at more than $5 million, Trump wrote on social media: “Sadly, Mayor Mamdani is DESTROYING New York! It has no chance!”
Mamdani is expected to speak to reporters following Monday’s meeting. Fox News Digital reported reaching out to the White House and the mayor’s office for comment.
