With midterm elections looming, President Donald Trump hosted New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani (D) for a meeting at the White House, taking the opportunity to stress the Republican Party’s emphasis on affordability concerns in his surprisingly friendly discussion with the Ugandan-born Muslim and self-described socialist. “We’ve just had a great meeting, a really good, very productive meeting,” the president announced to reporters on Friday, seated behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office, with Mamdani standing next to him. “We have one thing in common: we want this city of ours that we love to do very well.”

One of the issues that the president discussed with the mayor-elect was affordability and the cost-of-living crisis. “We talked about some things in … common, like housing and getting housing built, and food and prices, and — the price of oil is coming way down,” the president shared. “Anything I do is going to be good for New York. If I can get prices down, it’s good for New York,” he added. Mamdani concurred, saying, “It was a productive meeting focused on a place of shared admiration and love, which is New York City, and the need to deliver affordability to New Yorkers, the 8.5 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.” He continued, “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.” Mamdani added, “I look forward to working together to deliver that affordability for New Yorkers.”

“What I really appreciate about the president is that the meeting that we had focused not on places of disagreement, which there are many, [but] focused on the shared purpose that we have in serving New Yorkers,” Mamdani shared. “Frankly, that is something that could transform the lives of the 8.5 million people who are currently struggling under a cost-of-living crisis, with one in four living in poverty,” he continued. “And the meeting came back again and again to what it could look like to lift those New Yorkers out of struggle and start to deliver them a city that they could do more than just struggle to afford it but actually start to live in it.”

Mamdani noted that, according to his campaign’s polling, one in 10 New Yorkers who voted for Trump in 2024 also voted for Mamdani, largely citing concerns over affordability as a motivating factor. “So much of the focus of our campaign has been on the cost-of-living crisis. And when we asked those New Yorkers who had voted for the president when we saw an increase in his numbers in New York City, that came back to the same issue: cost of living, cost of living, cost of living,” the mayor-elect reported. “And they spoke about the cost of groceries, the cost of rent, the cost of Con Edison [utilities], the cost of child care,” he enumerated. “When we spoke to those voters who voted for President Trump, we heard them speak about cost of living. We focused on that same cost of living. And that’s where I am really looking forward to delivering for New Yorkers, in partnership with the president on the affordability agenda.”

Appearing on this week’s episode of “This Week on Capitol Hill,” RealClearPolitics White House correspondent Phil Wegmann suggested that Mamdani’s rise to power, as well as the seeming resurgence of the Democratic Party after the GOP’s landslide electoral victories in 2024, could be attributed to growing discontent with the president’s handling of affordability issues. “I think the takeaway from that election is that individuals in New York City, as they are across the board in all of these off-year elections, were unhappy with the state of the economy. If you look at exit polling, that is the number one concern of voters over anything else like immigration or any other social issue,” Wegmann commented. “People who were angry about the state of the economy and made Donald Trump president one year ago are still angry about the economy, and they just voted for Democrats. This is the entire ball game.”

Wegmann noted that the Trump administration was “able to achieve the majority of their marquee legislative lifts” in the One Big Beautiful Bill earlier this year. “This White House, they are really banking on that One Big Beautiful Bill turning into big beautiful tax refund checks. They think that in the first quarter of next year [they’re] going to turbocharge the economy, and it’s going to ease a lot of economic anxiety,” the White House journalist posited, warning that asking the American people to wait around for economic reforms to take effect may not be a winning strategy. “I don’t think the American people are really in favor of giving anyone patience at this point, and it may have been a misstep for this administration to focus so much on foreign policy during the second half of this year and give the impression to voters that they thought that the job was done on the economy.”

In fact, recent polling has found that American voters, including those who voted for Trump in 2024, would like the president to focus more attention on domestic issues, especially the economy, rather than on foreign policy. In a Rasmussen Reports survey this month, 62% of Americans reported that “it would be better if Trump spent more time dealing with domestic issues like the economy,” while nearly 30% said that the president is “spending too much time dealing with foreign policy issues.” Subsequently, a Marist poll found that American voters are increasingly looking to Democrats to address issues of affordability and cost-of-living prices, having given a Republican-led White House, House of Representatives, and Senate nearly a year to do so.

Trump and Mamdani also discussed the president’s immigration agenda on Friday, which Mamdani had previously pledged to oppose. “We discussed this at great length, actually, maybe more than anything else,” the president quipped. In contrast to Mamdani’s previous vehement opposition to mass deportations and immigration raids, Trump shared that the mayor-elect “wants to have a safe New York. Ultimately, a safe New York is going to be a great New York. If it’s not safe, no matter how well we do with pricing and with anything else we can talk about, anything you want, if you don’t have safe streets, it’s not going to be a success.” He continued, “So we’re going to work together. We’re going to make sure that if there are horrible people there, we want to get them out. I think he wants to get them out maybe more than I do. So we’ll work together. We discussed it at great length.”

Prior to Mamdani’s election earlier this month, the president had derided the self-described socialist as a communist and even teased withholding federal funding from New York City if Mamdani were elected. When asked about his characterization of Mamdani, the president responded, “I mean, he’s got views that are a little out there, but who knows? I mean, we’re going to see what works or he’s going to change.” He continued, “I think he is going to surprise some conservative people, actually, and some very liberal people… ” Trump’s National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett subsequently confirmed that the president does not intend to cut federal funding to New York City — yet. “Well, it feels like he doesn’t mean it now,” Hassett said of the president’s prior threat, “and I guess we’ll have to wait and see what Mamdani does. I think that we are really reassured that we’ve kept the police commissioner.”

Mamdani, likewise, has smeared the president as a “fascist,” but told reporters Friday that “both President Trump and I, we are very clear about our positions and our views.” A reporter pressed the point, asking, “Are you affirming that you think President Trump is a fascist?” As Mamdani began to respond, the president laughed and patted him on the back. “That’s okay. You can just say yes,” Trump quipped. “It’s easier. It’s easier than explaining it. I don’t mind.”

While the president’s humor spared him from answering the question in the Oval Office, Mamdani did double down on calling the president a fascist in a Sunday interview on MSNBC. “So, Mr. Mayor-Elect, just to be very clear, do you think that President Trump is a fascist?” anchor and “Meet the Press” host Kristin Welker asked. “Yes,” Mamdani responded. “That’s something that I’ve said in the past, I say it today,” he insisted, also referring to the president as a “threat to democracy.” However, he added that “what I appreciated about the conversation that I had with the president was that we were not shy about the places of disagreement about the politics that [have] brought us to this moment. And we also wanted to focus on what it could look like to deliver on a shared analysis of an affordability crisis for New Yorkers.”