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Hi guys—Will Saletan here, sitting in for Lauren Egan. In today’s edition of The Opposition, I’m diving into Zohran Mamdani’s surprising new relationship with Trump, and Mamdani’s ideas about how to defeat authoritarianism.
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–Will
What Mamdani Gets About Trump
When New York’s mayor-elect met with the authoritarian president, he didn’t waste time with denunciations. But he didn’t exactly hold back.
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DONALD TRUMP’S CHUMMY MEETING last Friday with Zohran Mamdani has roiled the political world. On the right, Trump’s embrace of Mamdani has complicated Republican plans to vilify New York City’s mayor-elect. But among Trump’s critics, the meeting has triggered a different concern: How can Mamdani collaborate genially with a president he admits is a fascist? Isn’t this a kind of surrender? Is Mamdani normalizing Trump?
For years, Democrats and Never Trumpers have assailed the president’s authoritarianism. But Mamdani has a different idea. He’s betting that the best way to disarm Trump and his lieutenants isn’t to focus on their fascism. It’s to take away many of their voters by addressing kitchen-table issues.
In Trump’s conciliatory reception of Mamdani, there are signs that this strategy might work.
Mamdani is no suckup. As a candidate, he routinely denounced Trump’s deportations, economic policies, and persecution of political opponents. If Trump “wants to come for New Yorkers,” Mamdani vowed in a debate on October 16, “he’s going to have to get through me.”
Since his victory, the mayor-elect has continued to sound the alarm. In a November 16 interview with New York’s local ABC affiliate, he warned, “We’re facing a crisis of authoritarianism coming out of Washington, D.C.”
But Mamdani’s approach to this crisis is primarily indirect. “We can respond to oligarchy and authoritarianism with the strength it fears, not the appeasement it craves,” he declared in his victory speech on November 4. He continued: “If there is any way to terrify a despot, it is by dismantling the very conditions that allowed him to accumulate power.”
To understand Mamdani, you have to understand those two sentences. He believes that the alternative to appeasement can’t just be resolve; it has to be strength. And he believes that this strength comes from connecting with voters, persuading them that you can improve their lives, and drawing them away from the despot.
In his mayoral campaign, Mamdani scorned Andrew Cuomo as Trump’s “puppet,” and he flaunted his own ability to attract voters independently. In their debate on October 16, Mamdani derided Cuomo for seeking Trump’s help to win the election. “That’s something I can do myself,” said Mamdani. “I don’t need the president’s assistance.”
On Election Day, Mamdani proved it. He got more votes than any New York mayoral candidate since 1965. According to the exit poll of voters in the November 4 election, 10 percent of those who had cast ballots for Trump in 2024 crossed over to support Mamdani.
In the days leading up to his meeting with the president, Mamdani talked about his outreach to Trump voters. First he went on MS NOW and bragged about a man who had come to one of his rallies wearing a “MAGA for MAMDANI” hat and shirt. Then, in a press conference a day before the meeting, the mayor-elect underscored his connection to Trump’s supporters. “For tens of thousands of New Yorkers,” he said, “this meeting is between two very different candidates who they voted for for the same reason: They wanted a leader who would take on the cost-of-living crisis.”
The message was twofold. Mamdani was pointing out that he and Trump had a lot in common. But he was also advertising an unusual talent: He had the power, from a very different position on the political spectrum, to attract and mobilize Trump’s voters.
This is a big reason why Trump fawned over Mamdani when they spoke to reporters in the Oval Office last Friday. Trump opened the session by lauding Mamdani’s victory. “He really ran an incredible race against, you know, a lot of smart people,” said Trump. “He beat ’em easily.” The president seemed to see in Mamdani an image of himself. “He came out of nowhere,” Trump marveled. “And then all of a sudden he wins a primary that nobody expected he was going to win. . . . It’s an amazing thing that he did.”
In their meeting, which took place before the press arrived, Mamdani talked about specific neighborhoods that had shifted toward Trump in 2024. He conveyed respect for the president and his supporters. “I actually shared this with the president” during the meeting, Mamdani