Here’s my point for what I was saying below. Here’s how Cenk reacted to the moment in the video:
And here’s how Cenk views Kamala getting Cheney’s endorsements (note, Cenk is one of the lying pieces of shit who likes to pretend that Cheney was a major part of Kamala’s campaign when in actuality she was involved with 1 rally and a couple of individual Town Halls, and that’s literally it):
Mamdani has a city to run. As far as he’s concerned, there’s no downside to him getting along with Trump.
Elections are over. Time to get down to business.
Here’s an analysis of the Mamdani visit to the White House I saw on Facebook by a gentleman named Bruce Fanger. First, it recommends everyone watch the full 30 minutes and not just the viral clips of the two of them getting along, which is always good advice when trying to analyze a media event. I personally have not watched the full 30 minutes because I cannot stand to listen to Trump for even 30 seconds, so I don’t know how accurate this is, but I post it anyway for those who can stomach watching it:
Thirty Minutes in the Lion’s Den: The Interview Trump Thought He Controlled
There’s a strange thing that happens when you watch the full thirty-minute interview instead of the clipped version the internet tosses around. The edges soften. The masks slip. And you start to see the actual geometry of the interaction — where power sits, where insecurity leaks, where the tone changes, where the truth speaks by accident. The viral clip makes it look like a moment. The full meeting reveals a dynamic.
This wasn’t a showdown. It wasn’t a humiliation. It wasn’t a triumph for either man. It was something far more revealing: a case study in how a bully behaves when he can’t rely on fear, and how a principled politician behaves when he refuses the role of the victim.
The meeting begins as all Trump meetings do — with noise.
The first five minutes are pure Trump: monologues disguised as greetings, numbers inflated beyond physics, scattered recollections of the 1980s like the era froze and preserved him in amber. You can practically hear his brain flipping through its greatest hits, trying to set the tone: This is my room. My chair. My story.
But Mamdani doesn’t react to any of it. And that is the first hinge of the meeting.
A man like Trump needs emotional feedback to function. Fear works. Flattery works. Even anger works. Mamdani gives him nothing. He sits there with the calm of someone who refuses to let the other person set the emotional tempo. It’s a small thing, but with Trump, it’s enough to break the cycle.
Then comes the shift — the “gracious Trump” phase. People mistake this for maturity or diplomacy. It’s not. It’s a reflex Trump only deploys when he can’t dominate the room. The tone goes soft, the eyebrows lift, the compliments come out in forced, syrupy bursts.
“You’re doing great work.”
“New York is lucky to have you.”
“You’re a very smart guy.”
It sounds statesmanlike until you remember the same man called him a communist threat two weeks earlier. What’s happening here isn’t respect — it’s adaptation. A chameleon trying to match the color of the wall. Trump is gracious when graciousness benefits Trump.
As Mamdani shifts to policy, Trump drifts into autobiography. This is the most telling stretch — minutes twelve to eighteen. Mamdani tries to talk like a mayor-elect:
transit
housing
Rikers
federal cooperation
immigrant protections
Real issues, real stakes, real governance.
Trump responds by vanishing into his own mythology. Crime statistics from memory that don’t exist. Grievances about prosecutors. Stories from “the old days.” Complaints about how unfairly he’s been treated. It’s not sabotage — it’s incapacity. Mamdani is speaking a civic language Trump’s brain can’t decode. They aren’t having the same conversation. They aren’t even on the same continent.
Then comes the moment everyone’s dissecting — the “fascistic tendencies” line.
And yes, it happened in the room, not after. Mamdani doesn’t weaponize the word. He doesn’t turn it into a headline. He does something more dangerous: he analytically names the pattern.
Immigrant raids.
Political retribution.
Targeting dissent.
Erosion of checks and balances.
Threats against the judiciary.
He lays out the evidence and names the behavior: fascistic tendencies.
Trump nods and smiles like someone being told he has an excellent golf swing. It’s not bravado. It’s not denial. It’s something almost sadder: he doesn’t understand the language of critique unless it’s blunt and emotional. Mamdani moved the discussion into the realm of political analysis, and Trump’s instincts don’t live there. So he simply… accepts it. Not because he agrees, but because he can’t absorb what the words actually mean.
The last ten minutes are the clearest portrait of Trump’s psyche. Once Mamdani refuses to bend, Trump compensates by overcorrecting into flattery:
“You’re going to surprise people.”
“I feel very comfortable with you.”
“We’re going to get along great.”
It’s dominance disguised as benevolence. When Trump can’t conquer, he tries to adopt. He folds the other person into his narrative: You and I are the same. We’re allies. You approve of me. I approve of you. It’s a kind of political camouflage — digest the threat by complimenting it.
Mamdani doesn’t take the bait. He doesn’t fight. He doesn’t flatter. He just continues speaking plainly. Which leaves Trump in the one position he hates most: performing civility for an audience that isn’t fooled.
What the meeting really showed
The full interview isn’t about Mamdani calling Trump a fascist. It’s not about Trump pretending to be gracious. It’s not about a progressive mayor meeting an authoritarian president. What the meeting showed is simpler and more damning:
Trump is only powerful when the room fears him. Take the fear away, and he becomes oddly gentle, strangely polite, and completely unable to dominate the conversation. People think tyrants rage because they’re strong. But the truth is they only rage when they know the room will absorb it. Mamdani didn’t absorb it. So Trump didn’t rage.
He folded. Nicely. Neatly. Like a man who knows the cameras are watching and doesn’t want the world to see what he looks like when the mask cracks. And if there’s a lesson here for the rest of the country, it’s this:
Fear is the oxygen of authoritarianism. Take it away, and even a strongman starts to sound like a man.
Just so puzzlegal knows she has company, I’m either completely unaware of that story or it has dropped out of my memory. To be fair, I probably spend less time on political threads than the average Doper.
God, I envy you! I wish I was so blissfully unaware of the stupidest of reasons to oppose Kamala.
It’s amazing how much you can miss if you don’t actively seek it out! My mantra for getting through these years. And Facebook is blocked!
I have muted the P&E forum. It makes me unhappy, and there’s nothing i can do about it. Occasionally, i follow a particular thread. (Full disclosure, usually because some post got reported.) I’m not on Facebook. I’m not on Twitter. I do get news alerts from about a dozen sources, and i hear a lot of NPR, mostly because my husband listens to it must if the time he’s not working. I’m not completely out of touch. But I’ve mostly avoided the vicious cycle of recreational outrage that overtook Facebook.
Al Jazeera
AP news
CBC
The Economist
The Guardian
NPR
New England Journal of Medicine
New Scientist
The New Yorker
NYT
Reuters
WSJ
Possibly a few more that I’ve missed.
Wait, there’s someone who still gives a damn what Cenk Uygur has to say about anything?
Good point.
He has thousands of live viewers, and new videos of his typically get a few hundred thousand views. So yes, there are quite a few people who still give a damn about what Cenk Uygur has to say, unfortunately.
all this Cenk Uygur stuff is going over my head, because I was totally unaware of it…but there’s an important aspect of it that seems illogical to me:
People seem to be comparing Harris meeting with Cheney before being an election, (when she controls no power) versus Mamdani meeting with Trump after an election,(when obviously he controls a massive, and dangerous, amount of power.
And also, a meeting between two people, neither of whom wield power, and who have no practical issues to discuss (just, “do you like me?”) with a meeting between two people, both of whom wield power, who have a great many practical issues they need to collaborate on.
I mean, I agree with this, I just don’t think it paints Mamdani favorably. There were very, very good reasons for Kamala to cooperate with Cheney - defeating their common enemy, Trump. Whereas I don’t really see the purpose of publically making the journey to DC in order to pay your respects to Trump. I don’t buy the idea that this is a brilliant political maneuver that will save New York City from the wrath of Trump.
I like it, as the MAGA people have to eventually start wondering why they are supposed to hate the guy one day and respect him the next. It’s tough to be MAGA these days. Trump is getting more and more unhinged.
My take is Trump is into Mandani for exactly the same reasons he’s into the Kenedy Center and the World Cup. Sure the Republican base hates them, but Trump was never part of the Republican base and doesn’t really care what they think as long as they vote for him. What really really bugs him is the population of his home city, particularly the elite upper stratas of New York society, absolutely detest him at every level.
Those people like Mandani (and the Kennedy Center and the World Cup) and so Trump wants to be associated with those things.
Trump has threatened new York, saying he didn’t want any federal funds to go there to be wasted by a socialist mayor. Mamdani has promised to lead a sanctuary city, which is also a hot spot for Trump.
I think it made a lot of sense for Mamdani to attempt to mend fences.
To be clear, i thought it was fine for Harris to seek an endorsement from Cheney, too. And i agree that a lot of people were out to smear Harris any way they could. But I’m happy with the latest Mamdani/Trump interaction, as well.
I agree: the idea that you must not consort with the enemy is absolutely terrible politics. I have a theory about what would’ve happened if Harris had taken meetings with Musk and Rogan (spoiler: Mamdani wouldn’t have had to meet with Trump), but that gets us far afield from this thread. Suffice it to say, I think Mamdani did really well here.
Yes, good politics is all about finding areas of agreement and working out deals that benefit more people. Not about being “pure”.
To be clear, I am also not saying that Mamdani shouldn’t have met Trump. I just hope the people who criticized Kamala remember all the good arguments they have for justifying Mamdani’s visit the next time an establishment Democrat talks to someone right of center in order to defeat the Republicans.
It might be easier if you just name the posters in question who you are calling out for hypocrisy.