We know that Mamdani shrewdly edited his message so it would resonate with Trump. He was able to do that because a fair amount of what Mamdani wants actually is what Trump wants, or at least what Trump thinks he wants. I genuinely believe Trump wants a contented, prosperous America, even though his policies can't possibly get us there. Obviously, Trump wants a country that gives much more power to straight white men and that's universally right-wing, and he wants to brutalize everyone who's uncomfortable with the means he uses to get us to his utopia. But I think he wants the citizens of his autocracy to be happy, the way Fox News tells him we could all be happy in a purely right-wing America.
So the policy goals Mamdani stressed sounded good to him.
Mr. Trump: You know, we had some interesting conversation, and some of his ideas really are the same ideas that I have. A big thing on cost. The new word is “affordability.” ...If you consume large quantities of right-wing propaganda, as Trump does, you believe that Democrats -- and democratic socialists -- want to deliberately harm America. They want America weakened and impoverished. They don't want American citizens to benefit from government programs -- they want Americans enslaved by government. They want crime to be high. They want whites and males and heterosexuals and cis people to be oppressed. And Mamdani specifically, because he's a Muslim, is seen as a Trojan horse who'll subject non-Muslims to "Sharia law" and force women into burqas.
Mr. Trump: What we did is, we discussed crime. More than ICE, per se, we discussed crime. And he doesn’t want to see crime, and I don’t want to see crime, and I have very little doubt that we’re not going to get along on that issue. And he wants to — and he said some things that were very interesting, very interesting, as to housing construction, and he wants to see houses go up. He wants to see a lot of houses created, a lot of apartments built, et cetera. You know, we actually — people would be shocked, but I want to see the same thing....
He wants to see no crime. He wants to see housing being built. He wants to see rents coming down, all the things that I agree with. We may disagree on how we get there. The rent coming down — I think one of the things I really gleaned very, very much today, he would like to see them come down ideally by building a lot of additional housing. That’s the ultimate way. He agrees with that, and so do I.
But, if I read the newspapers, and the stories — I don’t hear that. But I heard him say it today.
Mamdani went to the White House and said: I want to make the city better. Trump was gobsmacked! "If I read the newspapers, and the stories — I don’t hear that"!
It all reminds me of Barack Obama's 2004 Democratic convention speech, the one that made him famous and a presidential contender, even before he'd been elected to the Senate. Because they'd been led to believe that Black people and Democrats were at war with them, millions of Americans were gobsmacked hearing Obama say this:
Yet even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters and negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes. Well, I say to them tonight, there's not a liberal America and a conservative America - there's the United States of America. There's not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there's the United States of America. The pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States; Red States for Republicans, Blue States for Democrats. But I've got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the Blue States, and we don't like federal agents poking around our libraries in the Red States. We coach Little League in the Blue States and have gay friends in the Red States. There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and patriots who supported it. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.Obama won two presidential elections and is still broadly popular -- but he couldn't unite the country, because you can't govern even as a left-centrist without being the object of hate on the right.
By going to the White House and charming Trump, Mamdani bought himself some time. But the truce won't last very long.
Mamdani clearly tickled Trumps dick with his looks and charm but Gov. Wes Moore did the same. Trump called him handsome and told him he was doing a good job. A few months later he wanted to send the National Guard to Baltimore and lied on him. Trump’s unstable and erratic. pic.twitter.com/ODGNomhjdf
— Candidly Tiff (@tify330) November 22, 2025
Yes, Trump met Moore at the 2024 Army-Navy football game and then falsely stated that Moore had referred to him “the greatest president of my lifetime,” a lie that Moore called out. And now:
ICE may be gearing up to bring more agents into Baltimore and other parts of Maryland, according to public records analyzed by WYPR and federal procurement experts.So Mamdani's White House visit was a nice moment. It makes clear that Mamdani is good at managing people, including people who are suspicious of him. That's a good skill to have, and he'll continue to need it, especially with Trump.
ICE and the Department of Homeland Security posted two contracts at the end of October requesting proposals for “administrative office space in support of law enforcement operations” in Baltimore and Hyattsville, Md. The Baltimore facility will be between 11,500 and 18,500 square feet, while the Hyattsville space will range between 3,750 and 5,000 square feet.
“ICE is definitely on the footprint of those contracts, and it is a fair amount of space,” said Dan Meyer, a partner at Tully Rinckey, who specializes in federal employment. “I was kind of doing some back of the napkin calculations [for the Baltimore location]. That's anywhere from 60 to 100 special agents. That's a lot of space.”
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