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 said that he looked forward to working with the president to improve life in New York. The outcome of their meeting — and their relationship in the coming months — could be hugely consequential for the nation’s largest city.

“We agree on a lot more than I would have thought,” Trump said about Mamdani, New York’s first Muslim mayor. While this public posture is quite a change for the president, Trump has privately complimented Mamdani in recent weeks.

Mamdani acknowledged that he and Trump had been clear with each other on their opposing views, and said that their meeting focused on the “shared purpose” they had in serving New Yorkers and not on their differences. Trump said he expected to be a “big help” for Mamdani, and when asked if he felt comfortable living in a city governed by Mamdani, Trump said he “absolutely” would.

“I would feel very, very comfortable living in New York,” Trump said.

Trump also rejected the characterization made by his ally Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York, a conservative Republican, who has called Mamdani a “jihadist terrorist sympathizer.”

Mamdani, Trump said, is a “rational person.”

Mamdani, a Democrat and democratic socialist, ran for mayor arguing that only he could stand up to Trump, whom he has described as a threat to democracy. Mamdani has noted, however, that many New Yorkers voted for both of them.

Mamdani has reason to lower the tension with Trump before his inauguration Jan. 1. Trump has threatened to send the National Guard into New York City and to remove billions of dollars in federal funding.

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Tyler Pager, Emma G. Fitzsimmons and Dana Rubinstein/Eric Lee
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