Conservatives are already fuming about New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s plans to bring the Big Apple together.

Right-wing commentators blasted Mamdani’s inaugural pledge to bring the “warmth of collectivism” to city residents Thursday, claiming that the mayor’s seemingly garden-variety optimism was tantamount to communism.

“The quiet part is no longer said out loud. New York City embraces communism,” posted Steve Guest, a former staffer for Texas Senator Ted Cruz.

New York Post correspondent Lydia Moynihan snarked that Mamdani’s idea sounded “rather chilling,” while Trump nominee Mark Walker claimed that Mamdani’s comments were “right out of Joseph Stalin’s 1928 play book.”

But communism and collectivism are far from the same thing. Whereas communism is a specific political ideology rooted in Marxism, collectivism is more of a broad principle that elevates the well-being of a society over that of a few individuals. Exactly why MAGA world would be opposed to that isn’t exactly clear—especially since their own leader seems to be just as charmed by Mamdani as New York City is.

The populist politicos were remarkably buddy-buddy during their first encounter in November, despite Trump’s repeated browbeating of the 34-year-old political underdog. Over many moons, Trump accused the local lawmaker of being a “communist” and living in the country “illegally,” threatened Mamdani’s arrest, and even pledged to send the National Guard to New York City if and when Mamdani entered Gracie Mansion.

However, a quick Oval Office encounter at the tail end of November seemed to completely change Trump’s opinion of the democratic socialist, and Trump effusively lauded Mamdani’s stances on crime and affordability. What buttered him up, Trump said at the time, was the fact that Mamdani was “different than your average candidate.”

“I think you really have a chance to make it,” Trump said.

Trump’s confidence in Mamdani has not spread throughout his party. Hours before Mamdani was sworn in at midnight on New Year’s Day, the New York Post reported he would swear in on two family Qurans—the first mayor to use the religious text in the city’s history.

Republican Senator Tommy Tuberville responded by proclaiming, “The enemy is inside the gates.”

Donald Trump’s motorcade stopped at a random strip mall in Florida Friday morning so that the president could purchase marble and onyx for his increasingly expensive White House ballroom.

According to White House pool reports, “The motorcade arrived at a shopping center in Lake Worth, Florida at 9:46 AM.... The pool is told that POTUS is shopping at Arc Stone & Tile.” A White House official said that the president “is purchasing lake and onyx, at his own expense, for the White House ballroom.”

It’s perhaps no surprise that Trump wants marble in his White House ballroom. Trump first estimated the ballroom would cost only $200 million, but the president now claims the cost has skyrocketed to double that.

Trump has brought his longtime obsession with marble to his second term, pushing for it to appear just about everywhere. He urged the Federal Reserve building to be renovated with a marble facade, even as the architects wanted glass walls to indicate the agency’s transparency—and has since tried to use the renovation’s high cost as grounds to remove Fed Chair Jerome Powell.

More recently, he redid the bathroom in the White House Lincoln Suite entirely in marble, and he has proposed marble armrests for the Kennedy Center, claiming it would be “unlike anything ever done or seen before!” (Perhaps there’s a reason no one wants marble armrests.)

It remains to be seen whether Trump will indeed pay for the marble himself—or if he’ll add it to the taxpayers’ bill.

A new year, a new lie: The White House is apparently banking that the American public won’t remember what Donald Trump said about his own health just three months ago.

Trump admitted several times on camera to receiving an MRI in October—as did his physician, who released a report in December officially declaring that Trump’s MRI came back “perfectly normal.” Despite that, Trump now claims that he didn’t get an MRI after all, and that the medical assessment instead amounted to a CT scan.

“It wasn’t an MRI,” Trump told The Wall Street Journal in a story published Thursday. “It was less than that. It was a scan.”

The White House has never offered a reason as to why Trump received scans to begin with, but there are some key differences between the two medical assessments. An MRI utilizes magnetic fields to assess tumors, joint injuries, or heart conditions. A CT scan, in comparison, is much faster as it uses X-rays to detect illness and injuries such as cancer, bone fractures, internal bleeding, or lung problems.

The president was remarkably cagey at the time about the scans he received at Walter Reed National Military Medical in early October. At first, he claimed his visit was little more than a “routine yearly checkup,” even though he already received his annual physical just six months prior.

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