Unsuccessful Republican New York City mayoral nominee Curtis Sliwa told CNN on Friday he thought President Donald Trump’s Oval Office meeting with Democratic Mayor-Elect Zohran Mamdani proved that past barbs traded by the two men were all for show.
Mamdani’s defeated opponent expressed his view on “Laura Coates Live” that Americans “got played” as “suckers” by both the avowed socialist mayor-elect and the president, likening the duo of powerful New Yorkers to actors. Hours earlier, Trump and Mamdani met in the White House and held a discussion widely reported as unexpectedly friendly and cordial, despite the two politicians’ starkly different ideologies and past comments about each other.
“Well, see, I’m the street guy and, as you know, Donald Trump did not support me to become the next mayor. And you’re gonna to find out why, because we just all got played for eight months,” Sliwa told Coates. He added later he felt “like the American people were turned into suckers” during Trump and Mamdani’s feuding.
“Everyone in the world, everyone in the country, everyone in New York City, got played by these two thespians, these actors because, remember, eight months ago, we thought it was Godzilla versus King Kong,” Sliwa continued. “There was Zohran Mamdani calling Donald Trump a fascist — he’s not. And then Donald Trump calling Zohran Mamdani a communist — he’s not.”
“Just recently, the president said, ‘I’m gonna to withhold $7 billion of badly needed federal funding for New York City if you elect Zohran Mamdani,’ and then Zohran Mamdani, on the night of his victory, turns and looks into the television and says, ‘Donald Trump, if you’re listening, turn up the volume,’” Sliwa told Coates, paraphrasing early November comments by both the president and mayor-elect.
“So, they’re, like, antagonizing their followers. And then, all of a sudden, today, we’re expected to believe kumbaya: everything is fine, everything moves normally. No, no, no, no, no,” Sliwa added.
During the Oval Office meeting, Trump appeared to laugh off the past name-calling from the campaign. When a reporter asked if Mamdani still believed the president was a “fascist,” Trump jokingly cut-in before the mayor-elect could answer, “That’s okay, you can just say, ‘yes’ … It’s easier than explaining it, I don’t mind.”
Sliwa came in a distant third behind Mamdani and former Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who ran as an Independent, in the Big Apple’s Nov. 4 mayoral election. The Republican radio host and Guardian Angels founder received just 7% of the vote after his campaign suffered a major blow with Trump urging New Yorkers to vote for Cuomo. Cuomo was suggested to have had the greatest chance to form a coalition of voters large enough to counter that of Mamdani.
Coates then asked the Republican if “a good relationship between Mamdani and Trump” is “actually helpful” to New Yorkers, to which Sliwa responded, “Of course.”
“But don’t you think these two men, who spent eight months attacking one another and engaging their followers to foment anger towards one another, owe the American people and the people of New York City an apology for doing that, because clearly they didn’t mean it.” he continued. “They went into that meeting today, ‘Oh, all is forgiven. All is forgotten.’ And you know, this is the midterm elections.”
Businessman Andrew Yang, another former New York City mayoral hopeful, separately appeared to draw a different conclusion from Trump and Mamdani’s warm meeting.
Yang, who did not endorse a candidate in the Nov. 4 mayoral election, told Fox News’s Kayleigh McEnany on Saturday he was “thrilled” at the meeting’s “tenor.”
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“Because one of the major pitfalls potentially for a mayor like Mamdani was getting crosswise with this administration, having resources pulled, having ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] officials downtown and [in] other parts of the City,” Yang, a former Democratic 2020 candidate for president who left the party in 2021, said on McEnany’s show, “Saturday in America.”
“And so the fact that Zohran and Donald Trump seem to be on the same page, so many New Yorkers today are breathing a huge sigh of relief,” he added. “I hope it holds up.”
Yang was a 2021 Democratic candidate for New York City mayor and was, at one point, the favorite to win the party’s nomination before ultimately coming in fourth place. He broke with the Democrats later that year, going on to co-found the centrist Forward Party.
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