How Zohran Mamdani beat Josh Hawley to Donald Trump’s heart | Opinion
Donald Trump has a lot of words to describe Muslim Zohran Mamdani. “Total nut job.” “A disaster.” “A 100% communist lunatic.” The president even threatened to arrest the New York City mayor-elect this summer before he’d even won the election.
And after the two met in the Oval Office Friday, Trump added to his Mamdani vocabulary:
“A Great Honor.” “A very rational person.” “We agree on a lot more than I would have thought.”
So would Trump move back to a Mamdani-run NYC? “Yeah, I would,” said the president. “Especially after the meeting.”
Well, that was unexpected.
Judging by the reactions in MAGA social media Friday evening, the president’s base was shocked at the encounter, too, to put it mildly. Instead of Trump playing his usual intimidator role, he seemed almost submissive during the discussion, as if accepting an olive branch from a conqueror. When a reporter asked if Mamdani still considers Trump a fascist, the president told him with a smile: “That’s OK. You can just say yes. It’s easier than explaining it.”
What’s behind Trump’s seeming about-turn on the democratic socialist whom many Republican operatives had been planning to cast as the Big Bad face of the Democratic Party in next year’s midterms? Easy: Game recognizes game.
That phrase means that when a person confident in his own talent meets someone with a similar skill set, the two come to a rapid recognition and respect for each other. And when Mamdani stepped into the Oval, Trump must have immediately grasped his undeniable charisma.
Rush Limbaugh: Conservatism lost
Trump, regardless of your opinions of him, has gotten where he is in large part because of his charisma. He’s an outsize personality, exuding endless confidence. Mamdani has his own magnetism, wholly different from Trump’s. Yet the president’s body language and twinkling eyes Friday made it clear: He saw Mamdani’s magic, and Trump has always sought to hitch his star to celebrities.
As Trump noted, he and the mayor-elect have a decent amount in common platform-wise. The reason the institutional Republican Party was so opposed to Trump during his political ascent in 2015 had something to do with his vulgarity, sure. But it was vastly more about his promises, which were largely anathema to the GOP.
On the campaign trail in all three elections, Trump vowed that all Americans would get health care. That he would support labor. That he’d get government loan debt off students’ backs and never lay a hand on Social Security or Medicare. You know, pretty basic for-the-people populism.
Missouri’s Rush Limbaugh — progenitor of the modern right that gave rise to Trump — sounded the alarm bells at first. “It was a red flag for me,” the celebrated radio host said about Trump’s pledge of universal health care. Limbaugh, of course, came around. “Conservatism lost in the primary,” he said in September 2016, correctly noting that Trump had broken definitively from standard-bearers Mitt Romney and John McCain’s GOP. And while he admitted Trump is no conservative in the traditional sense, Limbaugh quickly became one of his biggest backers.
Populist positions on Medicaid, labor, stocks
Which brings us to Josh Hawley. Missouri’s senior senator has spent some of his time in Washington publicly bucking his party’s traditional priorities — which remain the same as the deep pocket donors’, obviously. Do you think the banking lobby wants the government to limit overdraft fees? That the factory owners want to give unions a quicker path to the contracting process? That the drug and health insurance companies want out-of-pocket insulin costs capped and preexisting conditions covered?
Because Hawley has thrown his support behind all those things in one way or another, even going so far as to publicly align himself with conservative boogeymen such as Democratic Sen. Cory Booker and — gasp — independent Sen. Bernie Sanders.
So has that made Hawley a favorite of his seemingly populist president? Nope. Though Trump boosted Hawley’s Senate campaigns, he’s changed his mind in recent months, going so far as to label him a “second-tier Senator” for Hawley’s proposal to ban senior elected federal officials from trading individual stocks — a simple, commonsense way to combat government corruption.
‘Morally wrong and politically suicidal’
I can’t see into Josh Hawley’s soul. I don’t know whether the banker’s son — who was once caught by a photographer mid-afternoon on a workday while he was Missouri attorney general, apparently shopping for wine from the top shelf in a store 30 miles away from his Jefferson City office — really cares about the regular people of his state. But I know he wrote a New York Times commentary arguing that Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill slashing Medicaid would hurt those who need help most: The law’s cuts are “both morally wrong and politically suicidal,” in his words.
He’s right. But Trump’s greatest triumph is that he has — so far! — been able to have it both ways. Because while he promises the populist moon to the screaming crowds at his rallies, he tells a different story to the ultrawealthy behind closed doors. He wants to stretch his tax cuts to the one-percenters as far as they’ll go, costing the nation’s coffers more than universal health care by many estimates, with none of the widespread social benefits.
Hawley might very well want the Republican Party to become the party of the people, the one that looks out for the little guy who feels forgotten and who propelled Trump to the White House twice. But I’m sorry, Senator: Your demeanor is a combination of youth pastor and honors-class kid grown up. You might have the courage of your convictions — but I’m afraid you just don’t have that charisma, that magic.
And that’s why Donald Trump proudly posted photos of himself beaming alongside Zohran Mamdani in the White House Friday afternoon. Underneath a portrait of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, father of the genuinely populist New Deal, you might have noticed.
Game recognizes game. I don’t think the GOP old guard is ready for what’s next.
This story was originally published November 22, 2025 at 9:10 AM.
CORRECTION: This column originally used the wrong last name for U.S. Sen. Cory Booker.
