Memo to Wu.
It doesn’t work that means, Michelle.
You, the mayor of Boston, don’t ask the President of the US to satisfy with you. You ask to satisfy with him.
That’s what leaders of nations all over the world do once they need to sit down with President Donald Trump, probably the most highly effective chief on the earth. They ask to return to the White Home.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy involves Washington. Trump doesn’t go to Kyiv.
It’s also the best way Zohran Mamdani, the Democrat Socialist mayor-elect of New York, obtained to satisfy with Trump within the White Home final week. He requested for the assembly.
Now, if you happen to have been Kevin White, the late flamboyant four-term (1967-1984) imperial mayor of Boston, who thought of himself a nationwide determine, it is likely to be totally different.
Not for nothing was he dubbed “the Mayor of America.”
He additionally had the swagger to tug such a public relations stunt off.
When he lastly left workplace, he didn’t depart any swagger behind. He took it with him, which is why no mayor since “Kevin from Heaven” has matched his nationwide renown.
However that was 4 mayors (and one performing mayor) in the past, and instances have modified.
Swagger is out and socialism is in, and socialism makes for unusual bedfellows.
Additionally, socialists don’t have any swagger as a result of they, like panhandlers, are all the time on the lookout for a handout.
Which is why Mamdani, a Muslim Democrat Socialist, obtained to the White Home to satisfy with Christian Republican capitalist President Trump. He went searching for a handout.
Discuss in regards to the odd couple: a capitalist who made tens of millions by means of an open and free market financial system and a socialist who needs to take these tens of millions away to distribute to individuals who didn’t earn them.
But they’d one thing in widespread, and it was that each are winners.
Regardless of all odds, each got here from behind to win campaigns few thought they may– Trump again in 2016 and 2024 and Mamdani in 2025.
Trump likes winners. And regardless of Mamdani’s off-the-wall socialism, Trump was impressed with Mamdani’s victory, noting how he doggedly rose within the polls as his New York marketing campaign developed.
“He really ran an incredible race against some very tough people, smart people,” Trump mentioned of his new buddy. He added, “The better he does the happier I am.”
Michelle Wu additionally ran an unimaginable race, so unimaginable that she ended up with no November opponent after she trounced Josh Kraft within the major and he threw within the towel.
However she obtained no kudos from Trump who most likely didn’t discover within the first place. Boston, in spite of everything, Boston is not any New York. No place is.
Wu, nevertheless, has been dogged and constant in her criticism of Trump, notably over his crackdown on unlawful immigrants, prison and in any other case in Boston, a sanctuary metropolis.
Which she is entitled to do as mayor.
Nevertheless, she is considerably coy and disarming with regards to visiting Trump on the White Home.
She mentioned, Kevin White-like, that she would flip down an initiation– that she didn’t get within the first place—and would solely settle for one t beneath her phrases anyway.
“I would accept the invitation if it came with a promise to stop snatching residents illegally off the streets, stop prosecuting his (Trump’s) political enemies, stop cutting life-saving research and funding…Sure, I would be open to a conversation at that point.”
Kevin White would have added that the assembly happen at Metropolis Corridor and never the White Home.
However White took the swagger with him when he left the constructing.
Veteran political reporter Peter Lucas may be reached at: [email protected]
