After months of trading public barbs, the US president and New York City mayor-elect are set to meet in person.United States President Donald Trump is poised to host New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani for a meeting at the White House, marking an about-face for a duo who have painted themselves as diametrically and ideologically opposed in their political visions for the country.On his social media platform Truth Social, Trump wrote late on Wednesday that Mamdani will visit the Oval Office on Friday in a post that also falsely called Mamdani a communist and placed his middle name, Kwame, in quotation marks.Recommended Stories list of 4 itemsend of list“Further details to follow!” the president added.Throughout the campaign that culminated in Mamdani’s historic November 4 election victory as the city’s first Muslim mayor, the president zeroed in on Mamdani as a target for public attacks, slamming the democratic socialist as a “communist”, mispronouncing his name and threatening to cut off federal funding to New York if he won.Trump even endorsed the Democrat Andrew Cuomo over the Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa in the final hours before the vote, telling his followers that Mamdani was a “FAILURE”.Mamdani, for his part, has regularly linked the Trump administration to authoritarianism and portrayed his own goals as mayor – tackling the affordability crisis and assuaging income inequality – in direct contrast to the president’s lifelong chase of wealth and power.“If anyone can show a nation betrayed by Donald Trump how to defeat him, it is the same city that gave rise to him,” Mamdani pledged in his election victory speech, referencing Trump’s New York roots. “And if there is any way to terrify a despot, it is by dismantling the very conditions that allowed him t …
