New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani spoke to Rolling Stone for an interview published Tuesday about how, while he and President Donald Trump can agree on a shared love of New York, they are sharply divided about ICE.
After widespread media concern about the rise of then mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, he shocked the nation by having a surprisingly chummy meeting with Trump after months of wary rhetoric from both politicians. In one viral moment, Trump gracefully shrugged off a reporter asking Mamdani about his past comments of Trump being a fascist, saying he doesn’t care.
A Rolling Stone interviewer marveled at this as he spoke to Mamdani, saying, “I think that was kind of one of the most striking parts of the very beginning of your tenure as mayor was that meeting with Trump at the White House that went, I think to pretty much any observer, really well for both of you. He probably felt the same way.”
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He went on to ask, “What’s your current relationship now?”
“The relationship is as it was. It’s built around New York City,” Mamdani said. “I think for all of the many disagreements that the president and I have, we have one thing in common, which is a love of this place. And whenever we speak, whenever we meet, it always comes back to that.”
The interviewer went on to recall recent controversies when ICE performed widespread raids in America’s major cities, asking the mayor whether he tries to stay on Trump’s good side to prevent a similarly scaled mass deportation raid in New York City.
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“I think I need to continue to be honest with the president and that honesty is in places of disagreement,” Mamdani replied. “I’ve spoken to him directly about how I think of ICE as a cruel agency that does nothing to serve the interests of public safety. And I’ve spoken about how I think that ICE should be abolished. We should have an immigration system that has humanity at the heart of it.”
He went on to note, “And also the president, he is a New Yorker. In that first meeting, as much as we were having a conversation as the mayor and the president, we were also having a conversation as two New Yorkers, even at one point talking about community boards and zoning laws.”
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