Two men from opposite ends of the spectrum find common transaction — and the WSJ notices
Two Populists, One Oval Office, and a Country Watching in Confusion
When the Wall Street Journal published its analysis of the Trump-Mamdani dynamic under the framing of “the power of populism,” it was identifying something that conventional left-right political analysis has struggled to articulate: how two men who call each other fascist and communist, who occupy opposite positions on nearly every substantive policy question, can nonetheless find themselves in the Oval Office together twice in three months, smiling for cameras and agreeing to build things.
The answer, according to analysts and the WSJ’s own framing, lies not in ideology but in political method. Both Donald Trump and Zohran Mamdani built their political careers by rejecting party orthodoxies, speaking directly to voters who felt economically abandoned, and treating institutions as tools rather than constraints. Trump did it from the right, mobilizing working-class white voters around trade, immigration, and cultural resentment. Mamdani did it from the left, mobilizing working-class New Yorkers of all backgrounds around housing, transit, and affordability. The emotional grammar of their politics is different; the underlying posture toward power is not.
Shared Queens Roots, Divergent Visions
There is also a biographical thread that both men have allowed to surface. Trump grew up in Jamaica Estates, Queens. Mamdani represented an Astoria and Long Island City district in the State Assembly. Both men, in their own ways, claim Queens as formative ground. Both have made New York real estate and housing costs central to their political identities — Trump as a developer who built his fortune in the city’s construction boom, Mamdani as an advocate who watched the cost of living drive working families out of the neighborhoods he represented. The same subject — what gets built, for whom, at what cost, with whose labor — animates both of their political biographies, though in opposite directions.
That convergence on subject matter, even with radical divergence on approach and values, creates openings for transaction that a more purely ideological framing would miss. Mamdani does not share Trump’s values on immigration, taxation, social welfare, or the role of the federal government. Trump does not share Mamdani’s commitments to rent stabilization, union wages, or community input in development. But on the specific question of whether there is a federal role in building large-scale housing in New York City, and whether that project can generate jobs and headlines simultaneously, their interests are at least temporarily aligned.
What Analysts Are Saying — and What They Are Getting Wrong
Some political observers on the left have criticized the “populism” framing as a false equivalence that obscures the profound differences between right-wing and left-wing political projects. Trump’s populism has been used to justify mass deportations, deep cuts to social services, and the concentration of executive power. Mamdani’s populism has been used to fight for tenant protections, expanded worker rights, and community investment. Calling both “populist” without distinguishing between the content of their respective agendas, these critics argue, serves to normalize Trump’s governance by associating it with Mamdani’s legitimacy among progressive voters.
Analysts on the right, meanwhile, have questioned whether Trump’s evident personal warmth toward Mamdani reflects any actual shift in federal policy posture toward New York City. Trump froze Gateway Tunnel funding during this same period. His administration continued ICE enforcement in the city. His proposed budget cuts would affect hundreds of thousands of New York City residents. A friendly photo in the Oval Office does not change any of that — and some conservative commentators have suggested Trump is simply using Mamdani as a foil to demonstrate his own unpredictability and cross-ideological appeal ahead of the 2026 midterms.
What Mamdani Himself Says
The mayor’s own explanation for the relationship is disarmingly direct. He keeps his conversations with Trump private. He says they focus on bettering the city. He has not claimed to have changed Trump’s mind on immigration, taxation, or any other fundamental question. He is not asking his supporters to like Trump. He is asking them to accept that governing the largest city in the United States requires a working relationship with whoever holds federal power — and that the alternative, principled distance, leaves billions of dollars of housing investment, federal infrastructure funding, and individual cases like Ellie Aghayeva’s unaddressed.
For research on populism and political method, see the Roosevelt Institute. For the history of NYC-federal relations, see the New-York Historical Society. For analysis of populist movements globally, see The Nation magazine. For the mayor’s official statements, visit NYC Mayor’s Office newsroom.
