Trump just likes charismatic people. And Mamdani being good looking definitely plays a factor with Trump as well. He thinks they are exactly like he is and just Narcissist too. So he basically does the “game recognize game” when he realizes it’s easier to try to gain favor with Mamdanis “followers” than to attack him now. He’ll go back to attacking him again when it’s convenient to do so. He just is the ultimate room reader and realizes it’s better to ride the wave than it is to fight it right now.
I think people forget 2016 Trump. He literally ran to the left of the Democrats on a lot of issues. At least in terms of more populous working class ideas. A lot of us knew he was clearly lying. But it’s always been a part of his game. This meeting was not at all shocking for people that have been following Trumps politics for the last 10-11 years. He did exactly what I expected him to do.
Also, for anyone reading this, if you hate Mamdani now because Trump wasn’t hating him OR if you think Trump might actually shift left now. Well, you’re the idiot that Trump is doing this type of thing for.
And I’m sorry for being the “not surprised guy”. But, really, go back and watch 2016 Trump talk about NAFTA, Social Security, Endless Wars, and countless other things he read the room well on. He never had any intention of changing those things. But he knows what is popular to get votes.
No, this is exactly what capitalism has done through most of its history. Whether in the imperial core or not. We pretend to think that capitalism was what the white working class Americans enjoyed back in post WW2. It’s why “MAGA” exists. It’s the belief in the same lie.
Seriously, go look back and look at pre 1950s American capitalism. It’s literally just company towns and chemical dumping everywhere. It’s exactly like this and always has been. We just focus on a specific time in post WW2 that only existed, as “good”, in reality for a minority of the population.
Capitalism doesn’t share it’s surplus with the working class of its own nation unless it feels threatened enough to offer some concessions. Something it definitely felt in a post WW2 in which FDR (really only because of militant labor movements) and the USSR had influenced.