Mayor Mamdani Gets Warm Brooklyn Welcome on ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live,’ Trades Quips With Host

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani received a distinctly New York welcome Monday night when he appeared on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” during the late-night show’s weeklong return to Brooklyn.

The audience at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Howard Gilman Opera House greeted Mamdani enthusiastically, with applause and laughter punctuating an interview that moved easily between politics, President Donald Trump, housing and the mayor’s very public social-media persona.

Mamdani was appearing on the first night of Kimmel’s annual Brooklyn run. The Sept. 28 program featured comedian Pete Davidson, Mamdani and TV On The Radio. 

The mayor’s appearance also gave Kimmel plenty of material. The host has been a persistent critic of Trump, while Mamdani has developed an unexpectedly cordial working relationship with the president despite their substantial political differences.

The Trump Connection

Kimmel naturally wanted to know how Mamdani and Trump had managed to establish such an unlikely rapport.

Mamdani’s explanation was simple: they disagree about many things, but they share an affection for New York.

“The president and I have many disagreements, but one thing we do agree on is this city and how much we love this city,” Mamdani told Kimmel, according to the New York Post, which reported on the interview.

Mamdani said that from their first meeting he had tried to keep the focus on New Yorkers rather than on the differences between the two politicians. 

That answer also provided a glimpse of how Mamdani has approached his relationship with a president who has frequently been his political opposite.

Their conversations have included the proposed redevelopment of Sunnyside Yards in Queens, where Mamdani wants to see 12,000 homes built. The mayor told Kimmel that he occasionally texts Trump about the project.

And that led to one of the evening’s more amusing details.

Mamdani said Trump’s text messages are “surprisingly well-punctuated,” according to the Post. 

The observation drew laughter because it was such an unexpectedly mundane detail about an otherwise extraordinary political relationship.

Kimmel’s Selfie Idea

Kimmel then tried to take the Trump-Mamdani relationship one step further.

The host asked Mamdani what if they texted Trump a selfie of the two of them.

Mamdani laughed it off.

The exchange became one of the lighter moments of the interview, particularly because Mamdani has become something of a professional selfie-taker himself. He is well known for posing for photographs with New Yorkers and frequently incorporates such encounters into his social-media presence.

From Trump to Housing

Behind the jokes, however, Mamdani returned repeatedly to the business of governing New York.

The Sunnyside Yards proposal offered a convenient example. The project is intended to turn a large rail yard in Queens into a substantial new residential development.

The audience wasn’t simply watching a mayor answer questions about municipal policy. It was watching a politician whose personality, political relationships and ability to generate viral moments have become part of his public identity.

Mamdani’s willingness to discuss the proposal with Trump illustrates the pragmatic dimension of their relationship. Whatever their ideological differences, the two have found areas in which the federal government and City Hall could potentially cooperate.

That contrast has itself become a recurring subject for Kimmel.

Just a week earlier, Kimmel had joked about Trump’s apparent fondness for Mamdani, describing the two as the protagonists of the “weirdest buddy road trip movie of all time.”

Kimmel’s joke was built around the conspicuous contrast between Trump’s politics and Mamdani’s democratic-socialist background. Yet their recent public meetings have been notably friendly.

The Mayor Gets Laughs of His Own

The interview also allowed Mamdani to demonstrate a side of his personality that is harder to capture in a conventional political interview.

Rather than presenting himself as a politician delivering a prepared policy speech, he played along with Kimmel’s jokes and the informal rhythm of a late-night interview.

The audience’s response reflected that tone. Applause greeted Mamdani’s entrance and his comments, while laughter repeatedly broke out during the exchanges involving Trump, texting and the selfie request.

The setting mattered, too.

Kimmel was broadcasting from Brooklyn, not his usual Los Angeles studio. The show was filming before a live audience at BAM as part of its eighth annual Brooklyn residency. The week includes an unusually New York-heavy roster of guests, including Howard Stern, Billy Crystal, Mahershala Ali, John Oliver, Seth Meyers and Paul McCartney. 

For Mamdani, therefore, the appearance was almost a home-field late-night appearance.

The Los Angeles Question

Kimmel also asked Mamdani about the possibility of becoming mayor of Los Angeles.

The question produced another easy laugh because Mamdani’s answer was unequivocal: he wasn’t interested.

The exchange was consistent with the broader theme of the interview. For all the national attention Mamdani has attracted, he presented himself as a mayor focused on the city he was elected to govern.

A New Kind of Political Celebrity

There was another element to the evening that was difficult to miss.

Mamdani has moved unusually quickly from being a relatively little-known New York state legislator to becoming a national political personality. His social-media videos, direct-to-camera messages and frequent interactions with New Yorkers have made him unusually recognizable beyond City Hall.

His appearance on Kimmel’s show was another stage in that transformation.

The audience wasn’t simply watching a mayor answer questions about municipal policy. It was watching a politician whose personality, political relationships and ability to generate viral moments have become part of his public identity.

That was particularly evident in the selfie exchange.

Kimmel was asking Mamdani to send a photograph to the president. Mamdani was the politician who refused—but the moment itself was tailor-made for the social-media age in which the mayor has built much of his political profile.

And the most revealing joke of the night may have been the least political one: Trump’s supposedly impeccable punctuation.

For a mayor whose relationship with the president has become a source of national fascination, it was an appropriately odd detail—two political adversaries communicating by text about New York housing, with the city’s mayor apparently taking note of the president’s grammar.