There were two surprises last Friday. One was the meeting between New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani and Trump. Given that the former had referred to the latter as a despot and fascist and Trump in return had called him a lunatic communist, you might have expected sparks to fly. That did not happen and what occurred was almost a love-fest.

The highly anticipated Oval Office meeting between Donald Trump and Zohran Mamdani – the mayor-elect of New York City, the US president’s beloved home town – was hardly the combustible tête-à-tête many had predicted. For the moment at least, the two New Yorkers appeared friendly, smiling and cautiously optimistic about the work they might accomplish together.

Neither revived their hot campaign trail rhetoric, in which they cast each other as diametrically opposed political adversaries. Trump had labeled Mamdani a “100% Communist Lunatic” and urged voters to back his opponent, the former New York governor Andrew Cuomo. In turn, Mamdani had assailed Trump as a “despot” and pledged to be the president’s “worst nightmare.”

But Trump went out of way to gush over Mamdani, even running interference when conservative media reporters tried to spark a conflict.



When asked if he would retract his attacks on the president as a “despot” and an “authoritarian”, Mamdani was prepared. He avoided answering the question directly, saying: “We are very clear about our positions and our views, and what I really appreciate about the president is the meeting that we had focused not on places of disagreement, which there are many, and also focused on the shared purpose that we have in serving New Yorkers.”

But before the reporter could press Mamdani further, Trump interjected: “I’ve been called much worse than a despot and so it’s not that insulting.” He predicting Mamdani might change his mind after “we get to working together”.

Fox News correspondent Jacqui Heinrich later followed up on the matter, asking whether Mamdani still considers Trump to be a “fascist”. Mamdani, cheeks flushed, began to respond, but Trump jumped in again. “That’s OK,” the president said, jovially tapping Mamdani’s arm and telling him it was “easier” to just say yes, which Mamdani did.

This has had people scratching their heads wondering what is going on, and most of the speculation has centered on Trump’s abrupt about-face, trying to get into his psyche. Ideas have ranged from him liking people who are winners and being impressed with Mamdani’s mercurial success in going from an unknown to winning handily in just one year, to thinking that Mamdani’s appeal to the young and his popular message of seeking affordability is something he feels that he should latch on to, to even speculations that Trump develops man-crushes on handsome men in suits.

Who knows? The good thing for Mamdani is that before the election Trump had vowed to cut off all federal funding for the city and make life as hard as possible for Mamdani to function. His new statements that he wants New York to succeed and would be happy to live in the city now will make Mamdani’s life easier, if Trump does not backtrack. It also undercuts Fox News and other conservative media and wealthy groups and the Israel lobby that had attacked him and said that people would leave the city in droves if he won. They must be wondering what the hell happened to make Trump suddenly abandon them. I definitely don’t know.

The other surprise is the announcement by MAGA firebrand Marjorie Taylor Greene that she will be resigning her seat on January 2nd. She cited as reasons that because Trump had been viciously attacking her, his cult-followers were physically threatening her and that she felt betrayed after being one of the biggest supporters of Trump and MAGA, even parroting the absurd claims that his loss in 2020 had been fraudulent.

One puzzle has been why she is resigning almost a year before her term ends in November. She said that Trump was planning on running someone against her in the primary but that does not make sense. She could simply have said that she was not going to run again and used the rest of her term to push her own agenda.

Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, one of her arch foes, is not buying her reason that MTG was opposed to what the Republicans were doing on health care. She says that MTG has been undermining almost every program to expand health care access. The only item she had been concerned about was the elimination of Obamacare health insurance subsidies in the deal struck to end the shutdown, because it struck home personally, with MTG saying that it would increase her daughter’s premiums substantially. AOC also said that MTG chose January 2nd since on the 1st, MTG becomes eligible to get a congressional pension, having served the minimum of five years. She will have to wait until she becomes 62 years old to be paid the pension but it will be a nice financial cushion for her in her old age, something she does not care about for other old people.

Marjorie Taylor Greene’s surprise resignation from Congress late on Friday, saying she refused to be a “battered wife” following her public fallout with Donald Trump, has been slammed by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Democratic congresswoman and Greene’s frequent sparring partner.

“She’s carefully timing her departure just 1-2 days after her pension kicks in,” Ocasio-Cortez said in a statement on her Instagram account, and criticized her voting record on healthcare.
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After her service to Trump, [MTG} said she objected to being “expected to defend the President against impeachment after he hatefully dumped tens of millions of dollars against me and tried to destroy me”.

“I refuse to be a ‘battered wife’ hoping it all goes away and gets better,” Greene said.

But Ocasio-Cortez said Greene “is saying a lot but her ACTIONS have not backed up the rhetoric. For all her talk, she’s STILL voting with them to gut healthcare … ”

Greene voted in the summer for cuts to Medicaid and the reduction of enhanced tax credits for the Affordable Care Act, but then in October criticized the ACA cuts as premiums soared.

Ocasio-Cortez also repeated some of her criticism of shares bought by Greene earlier this year before Trump said he was pausing tariffs. Greene has denied any impropriety in her stock trading.

Congresswoman Jasmine Crocket also poured scorn on MTG saying that Trump’s attacks have made her fearful for her safety, saying that she and other Trump critics have faced far worse threats for far longer and are still in there fighting.

Rep. Jasmine Crockett on Sunday appeared to show little sympathy for her colleague Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene after the Georgia Republican announced her upcoming resignation from Congress.

In an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union,” the Texas Democrat, long a foe of President Donald Trump, said Greene’s decision came after she was on “the opposite side of the president” for only one week.

“You’re on the other side of the president for one week, and you can’t take the heat?” Crockett said. “Imagine what it is to sit in my shoes, to not only be on the opposite side of him, but to have people like her who are constantly fanning the flames of hate and imagine what those threats look like when you literally are someone like me.”
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But Crockett on Sunday pointed out that multiple other Republicans, notably Reps. Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Lauren Boebert of Colorado, have also faced the president’s ire in light of their support to release the files on the disgraced, deceased financier.

“I mean, listen, he’s upset with Thomas Massie, and so he’s gone after him. He’s upset with Boebert, he’s upset with any Republican that actually signed the discharge petition,” Crockett said. “But somehow they were able to weather the storm. Why is everyone else able to stand and you can’t?”

So why did MTG choose to quit and why quit early? It may be that she has lined up some lucrative gig that she will take on after she leaves. We will have to wait and see what she does.