Trump Holds Leverage Over Mamdani After Oval Office Meeting
President Donald Trump appears to have walked away with the strategic advantage in his emerging relationship with New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani — a dynamic that insiders say is already shaping the future of the nation’s largest city.
According to a source directly involved in arranging last week’s unexpected Oval Office meeting, Trump entered the room knowing he held the leverage. That assessment tracks with the president’s public posture — praising Mamdani as a “rational person” who “has a chance to really do something great for New York,” as The New York Post noted — despite previously blasting the incoming mayor as a “100 percent communist lunatic.”
For his part, Mamdani — who once called Trump a “fascist” and a “despot” — tried to reframe the encounter as a budding partnership, claiming the two men share a “shared purpose.”
But behind the scenes, the motivations were far more lopsided.
Sources said the meeting was orchestrated by a prominent New York business leader close to Trump, who encouraged the president to view Mamdani through a long-term strategic lens. That outreach reportedly happened only after a senior figure in Mamdani’s own inner circle approached the business leader with a message: the incoming mayor needed to smooth things over with Trump before stepping into City Hall.
And the reason was simple — money.
New York City relies on $7.5 billion in annual federal funding, a lifeline that Mamdani’s agenda simply cannot function without. His team reportedly acknowledged this reality, recognizing that to close a looming $17 billion deficit created by his own far-left proposals — including free bus service, major housing expansions, and subsidies such as taxpayer-funded trans care for minors — he would need cooperation from the Trump administration.
“He faces a $17 billion budget deficit in the next fiscal year to pay for all the free stuff he’s proposing,” the business leader who helped arrange the meeting said. “Even if Gov. Kathy Hochul agrees to raise taxes, he still faces a multibillion-dollar shortfall.”
Then came the blunt assessment:
“He needs Trump and Trump knows it.”
As the source put it, “Trump is playing nice for now. But if Mamdani doesn’t allow deportations, or defunds the police or goes full on communist, Trump is ready to lower the hammer.”
Neither the White House nor Mamdani’s team commented on the behind-the-scenes details, but both sides publicly projected warmth — a tone that surprised many political observers given their prior rhetoric.
Still, the friendliness shouldn’t be confused with trust.
State law requires New York City to balance its budget, placing Mamdani in a box from day one. And Trump is expected to use that legal obligation to ensure the incoming mayor reins in the worst of his socialist impulses. Some analysts already see signs of quiet capitulation in Mamdani’s early moves — particularly his plan to retain NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch, a tough-on-crime figure, and his alignment with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries over a DSA-backed challenger.
The incoming mayor himself attempted to frame Friday’s meeting as constructive:
“What I really appreciate about the president is the meeting that we had focused not on places of disagreement, which there are many, but also focused on the shared purpose that we have in serving New Yorkers,” Mamdani said.
But seasoned New York political figures insist Trump isn’t fooled.
“Trump is not worried about Mamdani,” another top business leader said. “He has a ‘plan B’ if Mamdani misbehaves.”
In other words — the peace may be temporary, but the power imbalance is permanent.