President Donald Trump has turned on New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani just months after their surprisingly friendly encounter at the White House, accusing the latter of “destroying” his hometown through tax initiatives.
“Sadly, Mayor Mamdani is DESTROYING New York!” the president wrote on Truth Social late Thursday.
“It has no chance! The United States of America should not contribute to its failure. It will only get WORSE. The TAX, TAX, TAX Policies are SO WRONG. People are fleeing. They must change their ways, AND FAST. History has proven, THIS ‘STUFF’ JUST DOESN’T WORK.”
It was not immediately clear what prompted the attack, but there is little evidence to suggest that people are “fleeing” New York in opposition to Mamdani’s policies.
The Independent has reached out to the White House and City Hall for comment.
The attack was all the more surprising given that the two men enjoyed a cordial first meeting when Mamdani visited the Oval Office in November shortly after beating Andrew Cuomo in the Big Apple’s mayoral race.
The candidate shrugged off doubts about his experience by running a superbly well-organized grassroots campaign in which he made no secret of his intention to place higher taxes on the wealthy to level the playing field and make the city more affordable for the less fortunate.
Despite being poles apart politically and Trump having branded Mamdani a “100% Communist Lunatic” during his campaign and threatened to cut federal funding if he won, the duo got along famously in person.
“I think you’re going to have, hopefully, a really great mayor – the better he does, the happier I am,” the president said at the time.
“I will say there’s no difference in party. There’s no difference in anything, and we’re going to be helping him to make everybody’s dream come true, having a strong and very safe New York.”
For his part, Mamdani described their sitdown as “productive” and “focused on a place of shared admiration and love” between him and Trump – New York City – and “the need to deliver affordability to New Yorkers, the eight and a half million people who call our city their home, who are struggling to afford life in the most expensive city in the United States of America.
“We spoke about rent, we spoke about groceries, we spoke about utilities. We spoke about the different ways in which people are being pushed out. And I appreciated the time with the President. I appreciated the conversation. I look forward to working together to deliver that affordability for New Yorkers.”
The mayor even got away with having previously labeled Trump a “fascist,” which, when raised by a reporter, led the president to reassure him: “That’s OK – you can just say ‘yes.’”
They met again two days after Trump had pivoted back to attacking him at the State of the Union in late February, at which he disparaged Mamdani as “the new communist mayor of New York City” for opposing a new Republican-led voter ID bill, summing him up as “bad policy, but a nice guy.”
The mayor also described their second meeting as “productive,” preferring to keep the tone diplomatic, adding in a post on X (Twitter) that he was “looking forward to building more housing in New York City” as a result of their conversation.
