Mamdani Brings Obama To Nyc For Meeting

NEW YORK — Mayor Zohran Mamdani and former President Barack Obama met for the first time in New York City on Saturday, a high-profile sit-down that took place at a time Mamdani is trying to maintain a working relationship with the more mercurial current commander in chief.

The afternoon meeting — which POLITICO first reported would happen — was held at a child care center in the Bronx, a symbolic location for Mamdani, who’s pushing for a drastic expansion of the city’s free child care programs. After a private conversation, the two read books and sang songs to a group of children.

“This is what we need, making an investment in these amazing kids,” Obama told reporters as he and Mamdani left the facility, giving a boost to the mayor’s vision for child care.

Mamdani’s aides worked for months to set up the sit-down and made scheduling it sooner rather than later a key priority in the past few weeks, hoping to use it to extend the momentum generated by the mayor’s first 100 days in office, according to two people with knowledge of the planning who were granted anonymity to divulge internal discussions.

A spokesperson for Mamdani, who marked his 100th day as mayor on April 10, provided scant detail on what Obama and the mayor talked about in private beyond child care.

“In between singing ‘Wheels on the Bus,’ the two leaders discussed the mayor’s vision for the city and the importance of giving New York’s Cutest the strongest start possible,” spokesperson Joe Calvello said in a statement.

A spokesperson for Obama declined to comment beyond Calvello’s readout.

The meeting comes months after Obama called Mamdani in November, just before Election Day. On the call, the former president lauded Mamdani for his “impressive” campaign and offered to be a “sounding board” if he prevailed in the election. They also discussed potentially meeting in person, though at the time they were looking at Washington as the likely location for a sit-down,according to The New York Times.

Obama's campaign season olive branch came after Mamdani had in 2013 railed against the then-presidenton social media, calling him "pretty damn evil” in reference to U.S. military engagements overseas under the former president’s administration.

The Nov. 1 call between Mamdani and Obama was broadly viewed as significant, given that the former president is a standard-bearer for the Democratic Party establishment, elements of which looked warily at the young socialist during New York City’s 2025 mayoral race.

A lot has changed since then.

Now, Mamdani is dealing with the difficulties of governing, scrambling to address thorny municipal problems like the city government’s multibillion-dollar budget deficit. He’s also dealing with a person Obama knows well: President Donald Trump.

As it relates to Trump, the meeting between Obama and Mamdani may have served as a forum to commiserate over their uniquely fraught relationships with the Republican president. But there’s also an inherent risk for Mamdani, as Trump — who has called Obama a “terrible” and “ignorant” president — may not take kindly to the mayor’s decision to meet with the former commander in chief.

Plans for the Obama-Mamdani meeting came together at a time the mayor’s surprisingly chummy relationship with the president is showing signs of strain.

After shocking the world by charming Trump during their White House meetings in November and February, Mamdani drew his ire recently by announcing a plan to implementa pied-à-terre tax on secondary residences worth more than $5 million. Trump, a former developer who hasbonded with Mamdani over real estate issues, declared in a Truth Social post Thursday that the mayor is “DESTROYING New York” with taxes and threatened to have the federal government “not contribute” to the city anymore.

Obama and Mamdani did not take questions — or talk about Trump for that matter — in the Bronx on Saturday. But in a light-hearted moment touching on national politics, Obama asked the kids if they know the name of the current president.

“Mamdani,” some of the kids crowed in response, prompting laughs.

Mamdani said Friday that he wasn’t “surprised” or worried about Trump’s latest outburst against him because they have been open with each other about policy disagreements. “The thing we have in common is that we are both New Yorkers,” he said.

Still, Trump has shown himself willing to use presidential power to punish New York, a reality Mamdani is certainly aware of after seeing the president temporarily halt federal funding for major projects like the Second Avenue Subway and the Gateway train tunnel.

With that threat looming, Fabien Levy, a former Obama administration staffer and high-ranking official in former Mayor Eric Adams’ administration, argued it’s actually smart for the new mayor to meet with Obama.

“As a novice to politics, it would be wise for Mayor Mamdani to seek to meet with President Obama and take advice from a man who today arguably remains the most popular person in the Democratic Party,” said Levy, a vocal Mamdani critic.

Obama, the first Black president in American history, has had his own toxic relationship with Trump.

After Obama was first elected president in 2008, Trump led the charge on pushing the debunked conspiracy theory that the president wasn’t born in the U.S.

After furnishing his birth certificate to put the baseless claims to rest, Obama mercilessly mocked Trump at a 2011 White House Correspondents’ Dinner, saying Trump could “finally get back to focusing on the issues that matter — like, did we fake the moon landing?”

Despite the rancor, Trump said last year that he and Obama “probably” like each other after the two were spotted chatting at former President Jimmy Carter’s funeral. “We just got along,” Trump told reporters then. “But I got along with just about everybody.”

Prior to Mamdani’s big November win, Trump aggressively attacked him as well, blasting him as a “communist” during last year’s mayoral race. But Trump came around to the mayor after their White House meetings, and Mamdani has said he is able to maintain a “productive” relationship with the president because of their shared “love” for New York.

Beyond Trump, Obama is a potential inroad for Mamdani with more moderate forces in the Democratic Party who remain skeptical of the mayor.

“The mayor would be well served to listen to the advice of a political legend like President Obama who mastered the art of bringing people, especially Democrats, together despite divisions,” said a Democratic congressional aide from the New York delegation, who was granted anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak to the press.