Washington: Donald Trump began to soften on Zohran Mamdani when it became clear the young Muslim democratic socialist was going to become the next mayor of New York. The president loves a winner. Now, he seems to have melted like butter.

The odd couple met for the first time on Saturday (AEDT) in the Oval Office amid a flurry of media interest. Trump’s team happily heightened expectations. “We have a communist coming to the White House,” press secretary Karoline Leavitt teased.

What would happen? Would there be fireworks? Yelling? A walk-out?

In the end, none of the above. When they fronted the cameras after their meeting, Trump and Mamdani sang from the same song sheet. They might as well have sung Kumbaya.

“I think you’re going to have, hopefully, a really great mayor,” Trump enthused about the man he had frequently branded a communist lunatic. “The better he does, the happier I am.”

Standing beside a sitting Trump, Mamdani looked much stiffer than the smiling energiser bunny that came to characterise his campaign or his barnstorming election night victory speech. He was relentlessly on-message, saying he appreciated the meeting, and that the two of them were in lock step on the need to make America’s most expensive city more........

© Brisbane Times