Former US President Barack Obama and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani met for the first time Saturday at a Bronx childcare center, where they read stories to a group of preschoolers and sang with them, The Guardian reports.
The meeting takes place in the context in which Mamdani, a democratic socialist who recently exceeded the threshold of 100 days in office, is also trying to build a working relationship with Donald Trump, Obama's Republican successor in the White House.
Obama and Mamdani did not respond to reporters' questions.
Barack Obama, one of the central figures of the Democratic Party, offered to be a kind of adviser to Zohran Mamdani, 34 years old. His visibility, age and progressive agenda made Mamdani stand out in Democratic politics.
Mamdani took office in January after a campaign focused on making New York City more affordable, with a focus on redirecting government resources to support the struggling working class.
The mayor met twice with Donald Trump at the White House, in November and February, to discuss issues affecting the president's home city of New York.
Despite these cordial meetings, the relationship between the two seems to have become strained recently. Trump wrote on social media Thursday that Mamdani was “destroying New York” with his tax policies and threatened to withdraw federal funding for the city.
