Talks come a day before president’s UN General Assembly address
The Monday meeting was confirmed separately by the mayor’s office on Sunday and by a White House official. The mayor’s office said the gathering “will focus on issues affecting New York City and New Yorkers.” Trump is set to address the annual U.N. gathering on Tuesday; the speech is expected to address geopolitical issues, including the war with Iran and the wider conflict in the Middle East, alongside other points of global tension.
It will be the third time the two have met in person since Mamdani won the mayoral election in November. They met shortly after his victory and again in February, after Mamdani was sworn in. Both prior meetings took place at the White House; Monday’s gathering will be the first at Gracie Mansion, the mayor’s official residence.
The two have appeared to get along in person, but the relationship has grown more strained over policy disagreements. Trump and Republican lawmakers have regularly criticized the Democratic Socialists of America, the section of the Democratic Party with which Mamdani identifies. Trump and his Republican allies have argued to voters in the buildup to November’s midterm elections that the DSA has become the dominant force within the Democratic Party after a series of primary election successes by its candidates.
Among the points of friction is a multicity lawsuit that Mamdani recently announced. A coalition of U.S. cities, including New York, has filed suit challenging a new Trump administration rule that could allow the federal government to more easily deny green cards and visas to immigrants based on their use of public benefits.
Trump, a native of New York, said in August that his administration is reviewing whether it can challenge a new pied-à-terre tax championed by the mayor. The Mamdani-backed tax would apply to homes valued at $5 million or more and to co-ops and condos worth $1 million or more where the owner is not the primary resident.
“I am looking to see if the Federal Government has any legal right to avert this disaster,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform in August, referring to the tax proposal. He called the measure a “dangerous political ‘experiment’” that could destroy the city.
White House spokesman Kush Desai said at the time that “New York is President Trump’s beloved hometown, and the president’s only interest here is preventing the city’s further ruin by Socialist Democrats.”
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Sunday that he had spoken with Trump and would meet the president during the U.N. meeting this week. He indicated that recent diplomatic efforts to end Ukraine’s 4½-year-long war with Russia had made progress.
“I just spoke with President Trump. An important conversation, and we got through a lot,” Zelensky said in a social-media post. “We agreed to meet in New York, and this meeting could change a lot. There is diplomatic momentum.”
Trump is expected to hold meetings with several world leaders on the sidelines of the U.N. gathering.