Just one day after a surprisingly warm sit-down with President Donald Trump at the White House, New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani is doubling down on some of the harshest language he has used against the president—flatly reaffirming that he believes Trump is a “fascist.”

Appearing on NBC’s Meet the Press, Mamdani confirmed that his view has not changed, despite the friendly tone struck at their highly publicized meeting.
Host Kristen Welker pressed the incoming mayor directly, reminding him that during a White House press conference Friday, Trump had actually encouraged him to repeat the label.

“So, Mr. Mayor-Elect, just to be very clear, do you think that President Trump is in fact a fascist?” Welker asked.

“After President Trump said that, I said, ‘yes,’” he replied, later adding: “That’s something that I’ve said in the past. I say it today.”

Yet Mamdani also insisted the meeting was “productive,” claiming he and the president found common ground on issues that defined his campaign: skyrocketing rents, rising utility bills, childcare burdens, and the crushing cost of groceries.

“I was looking forward to having the meeting with the president to speak about the needs of the eight and a half million people who call the same city we love home,” Mamdani said.

Mamdani repeatedly sidestepped questions about whether Trump still plans to deploy federal troops to New York City—an extraordinary threat the president has floated amid campaign attacks over the city’s crime rates. Pressed again and again by Welker to say whether Trump ruled it out, Mamdani refused to answer directly.

“What did President Trump say to you? Did he assure you he will not send troops into New York?” Welker asked.

“He told me that he cared deeply about public safety,” Mamdani responded, before changing the subject to the NYPD and his decision to retain Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch.

Welker did not drop the question.

“So he didn’t rule it out?” she asked.

Mamdani again deflected: “What separates New York City from anywhere else in the country is we have the NYPD… and I trust the NYPD to deliver public safety.”

The incoming mayor touted his decision to keep Commissioner Tisch, arguing she had lowered crime and begun cleaning up “corruption that was endemic in the top echelons” of the NYPD under Mayor Eric Adams.

Mamdani framed public safety as “the cornerstone of an affordability agenda,” suggesting that economic and policing issues are inseparable.

The split-screen dynamic is striking: Mamdani calling Trump a fascist while praising their first meeting as an opportunity for cooperation, and refusing to clarify whether the president has backed off a threat to send federal forces to the nation’s largest city.

If the interview made one thing clear, it’s that New Yorkers can expect a complicated—and likely volatile—relationship between City Hall and the Trump White House in the years ahead.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)