Trump spent last year at war with Mamdani, and on Monday he came to Gracie Mansion, patted him on the back and agreed to build 12,000 homes with him.

Donald Trump and Zohran Mamdani spent last year’s mayoral campaign attacking each other, and on Monday 21 September the president came to the mayor’s house, stood beside him on the lawn and told him he was off to a start. Then the two of them agreed to put their housing teams in one room over a plan for 12,000 homes in Queens.

The president was in New York for the United Nations General Assembly, and he began the day with what the Associated Press called a detour to Gracie Mansion, the mayor’s residence on the Upper East Side. It was their third meeting in person since Mamdani, a democratic socialist, was elected last November. The first two were in the Oval Office, and after the first one Trump said the city was in good hands.

The house

Trump said on Monday that he had a hand in Mamdani living in the 227-year-old mansion at all. The mayor, he said, had been “maybe having some doubts about moving in because it is a little bit on the luxurious side, and I said, ‘When you’re the mayor, you have to live there.’” Mamdani moved in with his wife, Rama Duwaji, after the election.

Trump had been to the house before, for Rudy Giuliani’s wedding in 2003 and a book party for Charles Rangel in 2007, and he spent part of his remarks on the mayors who had lived there.

I have a lot of meetings right now, very important meetings with heads of different countries, but this is like a little bit of old home week for me.Donald Trump, on the lawn, reported by the Associated Press

The city, he said, had been led by “great ones and some not so great ones”, and then, with a pat on the mayor’s back, “Hopefully you’re going to be a great one. And you’re off to a start.”

The railyard

The agreement was about Sunnyside Yard, a 190-acre working railyard in Queens that the city wants to deck over and build on. Mamdani had put the idea to Trump in Washington in February, handing him a mock Daily News front page that read “Trump to City: Let’s Build” and asking for $21 billion in federal money. City Hall says a platform over the yard could carry about 12,000 homes and create 30,000 jobs, and that without federal approvals and federal money it cannot be built.

What changed on Monday, amNewYork’s Adam Daly reported, is that the two men handed the conversation to their staffs. “We’ve agreed to set up a new level of that conversation between our housing and operations team at City Hall and the White House team,” Mamdani said. The talks would cover the financing, the engineering and the legal authority to build the deck.

Trump did not commit money. Sunnyside Yard, he said, was “a very federal-oriented job” that was “going to need a lot of federal approvals and probably some federal money to do it. But it’s always been a great location.” Asked whether he was backing the project, he said instead that any development there should have a “pretty substantial” share of affordable housing.

Where they still disagree

They also talked about immigration, and there they did not agree. The administration has revoked Temporary Protected Status for people from 13 countries, Haiti among them, and New York State is home to an estimated 40,000 Haitians who hold it. Mamdani said he had made it “a priority for me, a priority for our city”. Trump, asked about it by The City Reporter’s Katie Honan, offered no change: “The mayor feels very strongly about it, and he did bring it up.” Mamdani was also asked about the president barring CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House last week, and said it mattered that those outlets were on his lawn. Trump, standing next to him, defended the ban.

After he left

When the president had left, Mamdani came back out onto the lawn for a few more questions.

I have said time and again that I will work with anyone, no matter what party they belong to, no matter how much we may disagree on other topics.Zohran Mamdani, to reporters at Gracie Mansion

“I will continue to have conversations with the president,” he said, “and frankly, anyone who can deliver relief to the people of this city.” Trump had put it his own way in November, after the first of their meetings: “The better he does, the happier I am.”