At Least This Comedy Podcast Asked Mamdani The Right Questions About His Meeting With Trump

Two days after Zohran Mamdani and President Donald Trump held a press conference in the Oval Office, the incoming New York Mayor told Meet The Press’s Kristen Welker that he still believes Trump is a fascist. It was a major headline moment and maybe even a little surprising after such a chummy meeting where the president seemed totally enamored with the young Democratic Socialist.

But the next day, Mamdani gave an even more illuminating interview—but it wasn’t on any major news network like CNN or MS NOW. Instead it was on The Adam Friedland Show, with comedian Adam Friedland. 

Perhaps it was because no one was bound by the rigid formality of old school journalism ethics on the Friedland Show, but Mamdani got a different line of questioning than with Welker. 

“Did he give you a tour of the White House?” Friedland asked. 

“He gave me a tour of the Oval Office and the cabinet room,” Mamdani said. 

“Can I ask you a question? Like how did you not laugh when,—how did you keep a straight face during the press conference? Cuz we were all dying and  I'm like my boy Zoron was like just straight faced,” Friedland continued. “How did you keep that face?”

It was, more than the questions about whether Mamdani thought Trump was a fascist, what everyone wanted to know. As countless memes of Trump looking admirably up at Mamdani circulated, capturing what was an almost incomprehensible moment of camaraderie between two political enemies, Mamdani kept his composure. Certainly he was aware of the oddity of the moment as it was happening?

“Honestly, I was just thinking about New York City,” Mamdani said first. “I mean, it's like the whole time I was trying to think about the difference between if you have a White House that is working towards an affordability agenda or one that's making it harder to live in the city. That's kind of what kept coming to mind.” 

Much of the remainder of Friedland’s questions got mostly slick responses from Mamdani—hedged by laughter that felt like an acknowledgement of some of Friedland’s observations. When Friedland asked, “Did you expect him to like you as much as he did?” Mamdani gave the media trained answer:  “I…I was trying to prepare for a lot of different situations.” But his facial expression and that little pause before he answered allowed us to infer that no, Mamdani did not expect Trump to love him. 

“Were Eric or Donald Jr. there?” Friedland asked. 

“No. No.” Mamdani said, cracking a grin. 

“Did you worry that, like to see that, was difficult for them?” Friedland followed up

“I wasn't thinking about that,” Mamdani said with a laugh.

Mamdani wasn’t thinking about it, maybe. But the rest of us were, and Friedland provided a form of service journalism that political journalists can’t by asking these goofy—but valid—questions.