Category: The Washington Free Beacon
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Trump cracks jokes with Mamdani in cordial Oval Office meeting: ‘I’ve been called much worse’
President Donald Trump and New York City’s Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani cracked jokes during a surprisingly cordial meeting in the Oval Office on Friday.
Mamdani arrived at the White House Friday afternoon for his highly anticipated meeting with Trump, leaving many to speculate if their interactions would be friendly or fiery. After the meeting, both politicians maintained that the meeting went well with a common focus on affordability, with Trump even slipping in a few jokes to lighten the mood.
‘I met with a man who’s a very rational person.’
Mamdani was confronted by a reporter about his previous characterizations of Trump as a “despot.”
“I’ve been called much worse than a despot,” Trump quipped. “So it’s not that insulting. I think he’ll change his mind after we get to working together.”
RELATED: Trump warns Mamdani ahead of high-stakes Oval Office meeting: ‘He has to be careful’
Photo by Jim WATSON / AFP via Getty Images
Trump also interrupted Mamdani with a lighthearted comment on another occasion when Mamdani was pressed about calling the president a “fascist.”
“That’s OK, you can just say yes,” Trump said, patting Mamdani on the shoulder. “That’s easier than explaining. I don’t mind.”
Mamdani promptly agreed with Trump and refrained from elaborating on his past comments.
RELATED: Zohran Mamdani becomes first openly socialist mayor of New York City
Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
Alongside the many moments where the two joked about contentious remarks they’ve made about each other, both Trump and Mamdani agreed on key issues like affordability and cost of living. Trump acknowledged that their solutions to these issues would likely be different, but he cordially praised Mamdani as a “rational person” who sincerely wants New York City to succeed.
“I met with a man who’s a very rational person,” Trump said. “I met with a man who really wants to see New York be great again.”
“I’ll be cheering for him.”
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Trump warns Mamdani ahead of high-stakes Oval Office meeting: ‘He has to be careful’
President Donald Trump has offered a preview of his highly anticipated meeting with New York City’s newly elected socialist mayor.
Trump’s meeting with Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani (D) in the Oval Office Friday afternoon is proving to be one of the most highly anticipated sit-downs of his second term. Trump described Mamdani, a staunch progressive and outspoken critic of the president, as “a little bit different” but remained optimistic about the meeting.
‘I give him a lot of credit.’
“He’s got a different philosophy,” Trump told Brian Kilmeade Friday. “He’s a little bit different.”
One of the focal points of Mamdani’s campaign was affordability, an issue that has also been a pillar of Trump’s administration. Although their respective solutions to address affordability are at odds, Trump maintained that the two New Yorkers are ultimately “looking for the same thing.”
RELATED: Is Trump meddling with Mamdani’s candidacy?
Photo by BG048/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images
“I give him a lot of credit for the run. He did a successful run, and we all know that runs are not easy,” Trump said. “But I think we’ll get along fine. Look, we’re looking for the same thing. We want to make New York strong.”
Since his decisive victory in early November, Mamdani has continued to rail against Trump and his administration. During his victory speech, Mamdani infamously told Trump to “turn the volume up.” In response, Trump issued Mamdani a warning but commended his campaign nonetheless.
RELATED: Zohran Mamdani becomes first openly socialist mayor of New York City
Photo by JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images
“Well, I was hitting him a little hard too, in all fairness,” Trump said. “It’s hard to be totally friendly to the opponent, you know. … He had some interesting opponents. But he ran a good race. I don’t know exactly what he means by ‘turn the volume up’ because ‘turn the volume up,’ he has to be careful when he says that to me.”
“I think it’s going to be quite civil. You’ll find out.”
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Bugs for thee, beef for me: How big business monopolizes meat
President Trump is right to turn his gaze toward the meatpacking industry. It’s one of the dirtiest businesses in America — not just in hygiene, but in habit. I grew up around beef cattle, familiar with the blood and bone that keep this machine alive.
What was once a farmer’s trade has become a monopoly’s empire. Four corporations now control nearly 85% of U.S. beef processing. They set the prices, squeeze the ranchers, and pass the pain to consumers — all while preaching “market efficiency,” that modern hymn for exploitation.
When the men who raise the cattle can’t afford to eat steak and the companies that kill them post record earnings, something stinks — and it isn’t the beef.
The transformation wasn’t sudden. It crept in, one merger at a time, one farm foreclosure after another. The local slaughterhouse — once a fixture of every rural county — vanished, replaced by sprawling steel citadels where flesh and spirit move down the same assembly line. The small family business that once sponsored Little League or donated to the parish fundraiser is gone, its name buried beneath a global brand logo. What remains is meat without meaning: shrink-wrapped, standardized, and severed from life.
Bled dry
The result is as dire as it is deliberate. Independent ranchers are being bled dry. Farmers sell out not because they want to, but because the alternative is bankruptcy. When four conglomerates dictate what you earn, what you buy, and what you eat, the free market ceases to be free — it becomes feudal. The serfs still wear denim and drive pickups, but they serve the same masters: corporate overlords with billion-dollar appetites and offshore addresses.
Consumers don’t fare much better. They pay more for lesser cuts, duped into believing the illusion of abundance. The supermarket shelves are full of choice, but the choice has already been made. The labels may differ, but the profits lead to the same boardrooms. When the men who raise the cattle can’t afford to eat steak and the companies that kill them post record earnings, something stinks — and it isn’t the beef.
RELATED: ‘Farmer’ George Clooney wouldn’t last a minute with my family’s sheep
Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/Andia/Getty Images
Corporate cleavers
The story is no different across the Atlantic. In Europe, the meat trade has been quietly butchered by the same corporate cleavers. Small abattoirs — the lifeblood of rural France, Ireland, and Spain — have disappeared beneath the weight of regulation and consolidation. What used to be an honest trade of handshakes and hanging carcasses is now ruled by faceless conglomerates answering to Brussels and shareholders in Frankfurt. The European Union speaks loftily of “sustainability,” but its policies have done more to sustain monopolies than livelihoods.
Ask a French farmer about EU policy, and you’ll get a shrug somewhere between despair and disgust. In Ireland, cattle farmers — men like my father, who once fed nations through famine and war — now feed debt. In Germany, abattoir workers live in company dorms, shipped in from Eastern Europe to keep costs down. The romance of the pastoral has been replaced by the cold arithmetic of the spreadsheet.
From beef to bugs
Meanwhile, consumers are told to eat less meat “for the planet.” How convenient for the corporations that now sell the alternatives — lab-grown patties and insect protein, neatly packaged in recyclable guilt. They’ve found a way to profit from both sides of the moral ledger: first by monopolizing real meat, then by marketing its replacement. It’s a master class in hypocrisy and a catastrophe for the working class.
Trump’s decision to investigate the industry won’t fix a century of collusion overnight, but it is a long-overdue reckoning. For decades, Democrats and Republicans alike treated Big Meat as too big to question. The lobbyists wrote the laws, the lawyers buried the lawsuits, and the bureaucrats looked away. The result is a landscape where cattle ranchers depend on corporations that despise them and consumers rely on supply chains that could snap at any moment.
Food, the most basic human need, has become another instrument of control. When you own the meat, you own the man. Farmers used to raise herds; now they herd invoices and inspectors.
It’s tempting to believe that this system is simply broken. It isn’t. It works exactly as designed — to enrich the few and exhaust the many. The old rural ideal of self-reliance has been slaughtered on the altar of efficiency. What we are left with is a parody of plenty: full shelves, empty towns, and even emptier pockets..
Trump’s probe may not slay the beast, but at least someone is willing to pull back the curtain and show the nation what’s really being carved up. For decades, the Big Four packers have sliced the market to ribbons, fixing prices while farmers starved and consumers paid the bill. Now, for the first time in generations, there’s a man in power with the will to carve them up instead. Call it poetic justice: The butchers may finally find themselves on the block.
