New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani met US President Donald Trump during an unannounced trip to Washington on Thursday. After the meeting, Mamdami went after X to say, “I had a productive meeting with President Trump this afternoon.” He said: “I look forward to building more apartments in New York.”
‘Trump Delivers 12,000+ Homes’: Fake Newspaper
Mamdani also shared a photo of himself with Trump, in which the US president is holding two copies of the front pages of the New York Daily News, “one real and one fake,” the New York Times reported.
The one in the left hand shows the actual front page from 1975 with the infamous headline “Ford to City: Drop Dead,” which was published after President Gerald Ford refused to bail out New York City, which was on the verge of bankruptcy, the report added.
In the other hand, Trump was seen holding a fake front page that read “Trump to City: Let’s Build.” In smaller print under this heading, the page read “Back to a new era of living”. And in even smaller print it reads “Trump Delivers 12,000+ Homes; Most Since 1973”.
Anna Bahr, a spokeswoman for City Hall, was quoted by the New York Times as saying that Mamdani provided copies to Trump and that the 12,000-unit number refers to the actual proposal.
Mamdani’s office declined to elaborate on the mayor’s housing proposal, but Bahr said Trump is “very excited” about it.
Anna Bahr said the mayor’s team created a fake front page and headlines for Trump to look at to show what kind of response the new federal housing investment might bring.
According to the New York Times, the design may have been a reference to Sunnyside Yards, a massive rail yard in Queens that the city has long dreamed of building with 12,000 housing units.
What else happened during the meeting between Trump and Mamdani?
At Thursday’s meeting — which was previously unannounced and lasted about an hour — Mamdani also mentioned the detention of Columbia University student Ellie Aghayev.
In another post on X, Mamdani said he raised concerns with Trump about Thursday’s detention of Columbia University student Elmina Aghayev by Azerbaijan ICE.
He said Trump later informed him that she would be “released soon.”
“I was just on the phone with President Trump. In our earlier meeting I shared my concerns about Columbia student Elmina Aghayev who was detained by ICE this morning. He just informed me that she will be released soon,” Madani wrote on X.
After the meeting, the student posted on Instagram that she had been fired. While the two men have been critical of each other’s political stances in the past and hold radically different worldviews, their previous meeting in November was unexpectedly friendly.
Mamdani also provided White House chief of staff Susie Wiles with a list of four other students targeted by federal authorities and asked the administration for help with them.
The four students are Mahmoud Khalil, Yunseo Chung, Mohsen Mahdawi and Leqaa Kordia, who were all detained for their roles in the pro-Palestinian protests. Of the four, only Kordia remains in custody, although all cases are proceeding through the courts.
Second meeting between Trump and Mamdani
It was the second meeting between Trump and Mamdani since Mamdani won the mayoral election late last year. Mamdani is a Democrat and Trump is a Republican.
When Trump and Mamdani last met in November, the president invited Mamdani to come back to him with the idea of building great things together in New York, Bahr said, according to the AP.
In their first meeting, Mamdani and Trump also talked about reducing housing prices. Trump, a former real estate developer, took umbrage at Mamdani’s call for more housing in New York.
Making housing more affordable was one of Trump’s promises ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, as housing prices remain significantly higher than they were a few years ago.
Cost of living and affordability were also major themes in Mamdani’s mayoral victory.
