Five Reasons Donald Trump Was Captivated by Zohran Mamdani | Vanity Fair

The face-to-face meeting between President Donald Trump and New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani made global headlines Friday—but not for the reasons anyone might have anticipated. The Oval Office press conference with the pair was “surprisingly cordial,” says the BBC. Trump “offered nothing but praise,” reports NBC.

Sure, we know Mamdani is charming, but so is Barack Obama, another leader Trump has spent friendly-seeming time with, even as he falsely accuses Obama of treason. So it's got to be more than Mamdani's charisma. Here, we offer up five theories to explain what Vanity Fair's Aidan McLaughlin described as a “lovefest.”

“Don't let Pete Hegseth see you in that thing.”

Name the powerful bearded politician who made these comments about Donald Trump:

Ted Cruz? No, I said “powerful.” It's Vice-Presdent J.D. Vance! Before Friday, the only things Vance and Mamdani had in common were a track record of Trump opposition and a beard. After Friday, they could add Trump's glowing praise to the list of commonalities. Fox News host Brian Kilmeade might be on a similar track as I am, saying “I think J.D. Vance is jealous' as he discussed Friday's event.

How would Michael Mann have framed this scene?

Everyone agrees that the coffee shop meeting between Al Pacino and Robert De Niro's characters is the most indelible scene in Michael Mann's classic 1995 film Heat. Nemeses in the same room, the grudging respect between hero and villain, the growing understanding that the opposites are far more alike than they realized…it's one of the world's most compelling narratives, from Batman and the Joker to the horseshoe theory.

“Right eye to left eye contact is the most bonding eye contact you can have with someone,' says MIT senior lecturer Tara Swart

According to the New York Post, which appears to be where most of Middle America gets their Zohran Mamdani news, MIT prof Tara Swart says that mothers and their babies bond using right eye to left eye contact. “Most people are right-handed so they’ll be holding their baby in their left arm, so they can use their dominant hand to do stuff,' she says. “That means when you gaze at your baby, your right eye is looking at their left and then that interaction from the optic nerve is going around the brain.” According to Swart, that eye contact creates an “emotional resonance loop that’s part of how the mother and baby bond.” So, if we assume that Trump was able to keep his eyes open during the private meeting he had with Mamdani prior to the press event, Mamdani might have been able to provide the president with enough maternal good vibes to briefly counteract Trump's awful-sounding upbringing by Fred Trump.

“One of the things that President Trump is really good at is he’s a really good listener,” says Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang

Long branded a horrific hellhole by Fox News, San Francisco has been bracing for Trump to deploy the National Guard to the famously liberal town since he started rolling troops into Democrat-led cities earlier this year. In October, the incursion seemed inevitable—that is, until a couple oligarchs, including billionaire Salesforce founder Marc Benioff and billionaire Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, called Trump and told him to stand down. Trump complied.

“One of the things that President Trump is really good at is he’s a really good listener,” Huang told the SF Chronicle about the call. “If you appeal to him, logically, pragmatically, with common sense, he will listen.” Benioff's Mamdami-aligned creds have recently taken a beating, but it wasn’t that long ago that he backed a hefty tax on large corporations to generate funds to fight homelessness. And Benioff was a White House guest on Tuesday, at the president's dinner to fete Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. An ideal time, perhaps, to take the president aside and suggest a warm and friendly approach.

“Guys, we got 'em!”

Remember when Donald Trump was on Sex and the City? When he donated to Kamala Harris's campaign when she ran for California Attorney General? When he told CNN “I probably identify more as a Democrat…And it just seems that the economy does better under the Democrats than the Republicans”? Some pundits describe his remarkable change in position as a set of craven flip-flops, a symptom of someone who lacks a belief in anything but power, or a sign of “accelerating cognitive decline.”

But Occam's Razor is overrated! What if, as Mamdani's election rival Curtis Sliwa claimed last night, “we all got played”? Is Trump about to reveal himself as a deep cover mole for The Resistance? It's 2025, don't rule it out.

The 2026 Hollywood Issue: Let’s Hear It For the Boys!

Exclusive: Inside Zohran Mamdani and Rama Duwaji’s Viral Clerk’s Office Wedding

Olivia Nuzzi Returns With American Canto: Read the Exclusive Excerpt

An Oral History of LA Nightlife in the Early 2000s

Donald Trump’s History of Insulting a Woman’s Appearance

Rupert Murdoch’s Last Hurrah

How Chloé Zhao Is Navigating Hollywood as a “Deeply Neurodivergent” Director

Exclusive: Marjorie Taylor Greene Tells VF All About Her Break From Trump

A Blood Concierge to the Stars Shares His Secrets

How to Win an Oscar—or Go Broke Trying

From the Archive: The Prince and the Predator