Mayor Zohran Mamdani told Jimmy Kimmel his working rapport with President Trump rests on a shared love of New York City, not political agreement.
The progressive New York City mayor took the stage Monday night at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Howard Gilman Opera House for a special Big Apple taping of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” and described how he and President Trump keep finding ways to meet and talk despite deep divides.
The New York Post reported that Mamdani cast their relationship as practical city business, not a political romance, while Kimmel, a longtime Trump critic, pressed him on the unusual pairing.
Mamdani did not pretend the two men see eye to eye on policy. He put the common ground in plain terms.
The mayor said:
“The president and I have many disagreements, but one thing we do agree on is this city and how much we love this city,”
That framing is convenient for a left-wing mayor who still needs a Republican president’s attention on housing, land, and city projects. New Yorkers living with high costs and stalled development care more about results than about talk-show chemistry.
Mamdani said the pattern started with their first meeting in November of last year. From the jump, he claimed, he tried to keep the focus off personalities and on residents.
He told the Brooklyn audience:
“And so from that first meeting in November of last year, I was just thinking of how can we make this meeting not about us, but about New Yorkers. How can we spend that time talking about the things that could make life in this city a little bit easier. That’s what it’s been, whether we met at the White House or at Gracie Mansion,”
Trump visited Gracie Mansion earlier this month. The two have also met at the White House, per Mamdani’s account on the show. Readers following that trail already saw how Trump invited Mamdani to the White House after an extended Gracie sit-down.
Love of the city is easy to say on late-night television. Delivering cheaper housing and functional infrastructure is harder, and that is the test that matters.
Mamdani said he and Trump text about Sunnyside Yards, the Queens proposal to build 12,000 homes on a platform over a rail yard. Trump was born and raised in Queens, and the mayor leaned on that local tie.
Kimmel asked whether Mamdani had sent Trump a selfie. The mayor said no. Kimmel also floated the idea of Mamdani becoming mayor of Los Angeles. Mamdani declined that suggestion too.
At one point Mamdani explained away a clip of himself blinking as nothing more than concentration on the Queens project. The studio bit played light. The underlying ask, federal goodwill for a massive city development, was not light at all.
Comedian Pete Davidson and the band TV On The Radio also appeared on the special taping. The Brooklyn run is the show’s eighth-annual weeklong stint at BAM, with other guests lined up across five days including Paul McCartney, Billy Crystal, Howard Stern, and Mahershala Ali.
Kimmel’s show usually tapes in California. Parking it in Brooklyn put a progressive mayor and a Trump-critical host on home turf, talking about a Republican president who still draws a crowd in the outer boroughs.
The special came after a rough stretch for the host. Disney briefly suspended “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” after remarks tied to the Charlie Kirk assassination. ABC said the show would be preempted indefinitely, then it returned days later.
Earlier this month, on his 4,000th episode, the 58-year-old host took aim at FCC Chairman Brendan Carr. Kimmel has also claimed ABC opted not to air a recent interview with Texas Democrat Senate hopeful James Talarico over threats from “Trump’s FCC.”
So the same broadcast that gave Mamdani a friendly platform to describe cordial texts with Trump also carried the host’s running grievance against the administration’s regulators. The contrast wrote itself.
Mamdani’s softer tone toward Trump on housing talk sits beside a much sharper record on other national fights. He has drawn heavy criticism for extreme foreign-policy rhetoric, including when Mamdani called Netanyahu the architect of a horrific genocide ahead of a UN visit.
City voters did not elect a late-night guest. They elected an executive who must work across party lines without pretending radical politics vanish because a rail-yard project needs friends in Washington.
The mayor’s chummy description of Trump will not quiet critics who already want him sidelined from solemn civic stages. 9/11 families petitioned to bar Mamdani from the 25th anniversary Ground Zero ceremony, a reminder that goodwill on one development pitch does not settle trust on larger questions of judgment.
Public defenses of the mayor have rolled in from celebrity corners even as those families spoke out. The split screen is now familiar: polished television warmth on one channel, raw opposition on another.
Trump, for his part, has shown he will reject bad process and bad policy even when the flattery is aimed his way, as when Trump rejected a Florida Republican’s migrant legalization bill despite the soft pitch that came with it.
That same standard should apply to New York. Shared affection for the city is a starting point, not a blank check. If Sunnyside Yards and similar projects move from talk-show anecdotes to finished homes, residents will notice. If the meetings become only optics, they will notice that too.
Mamdani wanted Monday night’s story to be about practical love of New York. Fine. Deliver the practical part.
Talk-show charm fades. Results in Queens and across the five boroughs do not.