Zohran Mamdani, the mayor of New York City, accused U.S. President Donald Trump of “killing thousands of people” in the Iran conflict and defended his decision to revoke his predecessor’s executive orders about Jew-hatred and anti-Israel boycotts in an interview at City Hall with Leila Fadel, of NPR.

Fadel pressed the mayor multiple times about his relationship with Trump, with whom Mamdani has met at least twice at the White House since he began his term at City Hall in January.

“I’ll keep the nature of the conversations with the president between the two of us,” Mamdani told NPR. “What I will tell you is that it is no secret, not my concerns, I would describe it more as a deep opposition to this war, a deep opposition that comes out of a concern for what our politics are incentivizing in this moment, the killing of civilians, as opposed to the uplifting of working-class people across this country.”

Fadel noted that Trump has called Mamdani a “communist lunatic” and that the mayor called the president a “fascist.”

“Now that you’ve met with him, that you’ve spoken with him multiple times, do you still think he’s a fascist?” she asked. “Yes,” Mamdani said.

She asked if the mayor has told Trump that he considers him a fascist. “Yes,” Mamdani said. Asked how Trump responds, Mamdani said that “I think everyone saw in the conversation we had in the Oval Office after our first meeting.”

“He seems to like you. Are you and the president friends?” Fadel wondered. “I would say that he’s the president and I’m the mayor,” Mamdani said. “The basis of the relationship comes from those two positions.”

“Look at the war in Iran today,” he told Fadel in response to another question. “We’re talking about a federal administration that has spent close to $30 billion killing thousands of people at a time when working class people across this country cannot afford the bare minimum.”

Jew-hatred
Mamdani, who has said that he wants to build stronger relationships with Jewish New Yorkers, has drawn “significant support from liberal and leftist Jewish Americans, Jewish communities,” Fadel said.

“But you also drew a lot of skepticism, and there was a lot of fear that your sharp criticisms of Israel would also translate into something else,” she told Mamdani. “You did not renew two executive orders from your predecessor, one that adopted a broad definition of antisemitism, and another that prohibited city employees from engaging in the boycott, divest and sanctions movement against Israel. And this drew some concerns from some Jewish groups here. Why did you make that decision?”

Mamdani said that he made the decision to revoke every executive order that his predecessor, Eric Adams, signed after he was indicted on federal charges.

“That was a moment at which many New Yorkers started to ask themselves: ‘What was the motivation of any one executive order?’ Was it driven by self-interest, or was it, in fact, being driven by what it should be, which is public interest?” the mayor told NPR. “We’ve also sought to show that we are fully committed in fulfilling what we had spoken about over the course of the campaign to not just keep Jewish New Yorkers safe across the city alongside each and every New Yorker, but also to celebrate and cherish those same New Yorkers.”

The mayor, who has said that he would have the Israeli prime minister arrested in the Big Apple and whose spokeswoman said that synagogues violate international law by hosting pro-Israel events, told NPR that “over the course, for example, of Passover, it’s been an incredible opportunity for me to attend a number of seders, to host Jewish City Hall officials at our home at Gracie Mansion for a seder, to sit there as staffers look for the afikomen, to get a better sense of what it means to lead a city with such incredible beauty and breadth of Jewish life across the five boroughs and also to get a glimpse into the amount of service that so many organizations within the Jewish community are providing.”

Fadel asked how the mayor’s administration plans to define Jew-hatred.

“We actually have the Office to Combat Antisemitism here at City Hall, and one of their jobs is to not only define that but frankly to conduct a listening tour to actually bring in the perspectives of Jewish New Yorkers from across the five boroughs,” he said.