A horde of a few dozen reporters, cable news anchors, and camera crews sprinted across Lafayette Square, before forming a roiling mosh under the bronze statue of Andrew Jackson, impatiently waiting for the arrival of Zohran Mamdani.
He never came. After a considerable wait, an aide for Mamdani came out and informed the ravenous scrum of journalists that the whole throng-on-the-park situation was “unsafe” (fair enough). Your correspondent monitored the chaos from a safe distance. One frazzled reporter, after extricating himself from the pack, described the scene as “mob conditions.” Kaitlan Collins was nearly decked in the head by a large camera.
President Donald Trump, who moments earlier had hosted Mamdani for an extraordinary press conference in the Oval Office, joked that no one he’s welcomed into the White House—not even heads of state—have drawn as much attention as the mayor-elect of New York. “For some reason, the press has found this to be a very interesting meeting,” Trump said. “The biggest people in the world, they come over from countries, nobody cares, but they did care about this meeting, and it was a great meeting.”
Those hoping for a brawl—like Senator Rick Scott, who wrote on X earlier Friday that the “little communist” was set to be “schooled” by Trump—were surely disappointed. The New York Post will have to find a grisly crime in the five boroughs for tomorrow’s front page, because no blood was spilled in the Oval on Friday afternoon. From the moment the meeting was opened to press, the president sat behind the Resolute Desk and lavished praise on the young Democratic socialist who stood to his right. He congratulated Mamdani on his election win and gave him a warm handshake. “The better he does, the happier I am,” Trump said, beaming.
The pair fielded a series of questions from pool reporters carefully crafted to drum up conflict. Trump, who just this week called Mamdani a “communist,” was asked about those attacks. He brushed them off: “I mean, he’s got views a little out there, but who knows. I mean, we’re going to see what works.” Even more stunning, when a reporter asked Mamdani about his labeling of Trump as a “fascist,” Trump stepped in to rescue him. “That’s okay, you can just say yes, it’s easier than explaining it, I don’t mind,” Trump said, playfully tapping Mamdani on the arm.
