U.S. President Donald Trump is making a “serious and dangerous mistake” by taking an increasingly warm tone toward New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, Morton Klein, national president of the Zionist Organization of America, told JNS.
Seeing Trump appear alongside Mamdani at a press conference outside Gracie Mansion, the mayoral residence, on Monday was “horrifying,” according to Klein.
“Trump has praised bad actors like Putin, Kim Jong Un and Xi, apparently wrongly believing it will moderate their actions. Instead it mainstreams their actions,” Klein told JNS, of the Russian, North Korean and Chinese leaders.
“His inappropriate praise of Mamdani will do the same,” Klein said.
Trump told reporters on Monday that Gracie Mansion is a “beautiful place.”
“I’ve seen it with numerous different mayors, and I said ‘some great ones and some not so great ones,’” the president said, turning to Mamdani. “So hopefully you’re going to be a great one. I’ll be able to say you’re going to be a great one, and you’re off to a start.”
Trump has previously described democratic socialists, like Mamdani, as “extreme, crazed lunatics,” who threaten to turn the United States into “a communist country.” But he twice invited Mamdani to Oval Office meetings at the White House, including one where they held a press conference.
On Monday, the president patted Mamdani on the shoulder and shook his hand.
That behavior “legitimizes and normalizes” Mamdani, according to Klein, who said that the mayor is a “radical socialist, Jew-hating, Israel-hater, terrorist promoter and America-hater.”
Mamdani opposes “American capitalism” and refuses “to condemn calls for terrorism and murder of Jews, to accept the Jewish state of Israel and to place a single Jew on the 18 member New York City judiciary committee,” he said.
“He also appointed terrorist sympathizer Ramzi Kassem to his top legal post,” Klein added.
JNS asked Klein if he thinks that Trump’s posture toward Mamdani could undermine efforts of the president’s fellow Republicans, who are campaigning against the mayor and his policies.
“Trump’s embrace of Mamdani is bad for New York City, America, his Republican Party and growing Jewish concerns,” Klein said.
Rabbi Yaakov Menken, executive vice president of the Coalition for Jewish Values, told JNS that Trump “has a history of meeting with those we consider hostile.”
“He was the first sitting president to visit North Korea to meet with Kim Jong Un,” Menken said. “He always has an eye on the political results, but I think he knows who Mamdani is and why those who value a Jewish presence in America so strongly oppose him.”
Eugene Kontorovich, a law professor at George Mason University and director of the international law department at the Jerusalem think tank Kohelet Policy Forum, doesn’t think the meeting was a big deal.
“I wouldn’t read too much into it,” he told JNS. “It’s not the first time they’ve met. Trump is in New York, which is a city which hosts the United Nations. It’s a polite thing to do.”
“He’s probably happy Mamdani didn’t give him a big headache by trying to arrest Bibi,” the legal expert said, of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Trump “likes to meet people,” Kontorovich said. “He’s met all kinds of bad guys.”
“He met the North Korean dictators, and he has no problem meeting bad guys if he has a chance to meet them,” he told JNS. “He gives everyone a chance, and he gives them a personal meeting.”
“That’s his way of making deals and doing business,” he added.
To Kontorovich, whether the meetings legitimize bad behavior “all depends what he does afterwards.”
“If he meets with them and then comes after them with a hammer, that’s kind of the net,” he said.
Trump has been “overwhelmingly very harsh” with Mamdani, Kontorovich said. But Mamdani is still the mayor of New York City.
“It’s hard not to meet with him,” he told JNS. “I don’t know that much will be gained. Maybe he thinks he can win him over to be a little more reasonable, but we’ve seen Trump try to do that and be very realistic when it doesn’t work.”
Kontorovich also waved off concerns that the meeting could hurt Republicans in New York.
“It really shouldn’t,” he told JNS. “It’s just a meeting, right?”
