There are political disappointments, and then there are political betrayals so jarring, so utterly confounding, that they leave even the most seasoned observers questioning whether the ground beneath them has shifted. President Donald Trump’s warm, uncritical welcome of New York City Mayor-Elect Zohran Mamdani at the White House on Friday was not merely a misstep. It was not a momentary lapse in judgment. It was a capitulation — and one with consequences that will reverberate through New York, through American Jewry, and through the Republican Party for years to come.

For months, Trump thundered that Zohran Mamdani was a dangerous extremist, a communist aligned with the most radical anti-Israel elements in American political life. He was right. Mamdani’s record speaks for itself. He refuses — flatly refuses — to condemn the phrase “globalize the intifada,” a slogan that, stripped of euphemism, means exactly what its chanters intend: Kill the Jews. He toys with semantics, drowns reporters in pseudo-intellectual jargon, and hides behind claims of “free expression,” all while a metastasizing movement of anti-Zionist thugs weaponizes that very phrase at rallies, college campuses, and New York streets.

And yet, when face-to-face with this same man — a man he once called a communist, a threat, a danger — Trump did nothing. Worse than nothing. He extended a velvet-gloved hand, declared that he and Mamdani “share ideas” about the governance of New York City, and insisted, with the ease of someone brushing lint from his jacket, that Mamdani was not a jihadist.

A statement so staggeringly divorced from reality that it will live in infamy.

Trump did not challenge Mamdani on his anti-Israel and anti-Jewish statements. He did not confront him over his refusal to condemn “globalize the intifada.” He did not interrogate his equivocal and reprehensible comments about the siege of Park East Synagogue on November 19 — a night when an anti-Zionist mob menaced Jewish worshipers on the Upper East Side, chanting “From New York to Gaza, globalize the intifada” and “Resistance you make us proud, take another settler out.”

These were not harmless slogans. These were explicit calls for violence.

Yet Mamdani’s statement about the synagogue was not to condemn the mob, not to defend Jewish New Yorkers, not even to express the slightest discomfort with a religious institution being targeted. His response was a legalistic smear: that “these sacred spaces should not be used to promote activities in violation of international law.”

International law? Let us be clear. Crystal clear.

The meeting inside Park East that evening was not merely legal — it was explicitly protected by international law. The right of Jewish immigration to their ancestral homeland was enshrined in the 1920 San Remo Agreement, codified by the League of Nations in 1922, and carried forward into the foundational documents that led to the creation of the State of Israel. It is Mamdani — not the attendees of a synagogue gathering — who distorts international law to justify the intimidation of Jews.

Trump knew this. Trump had been told this. Trump has spent years positioning himself as the most pro-Israel president in American history.

And yet he sat at the resolute desk in the Oval Office and said nothing to Mamdani.

And when Mamdani stood in the Oval Office next to the president and declared that Israel had committed “genocide” in Gaza, a patently mendacious claim that is at the core of Hamas propaganda, Trump did not challenge it.

When a reporter asked Trump outright whether he believed Mamdani was a jihadist, he said no — even though Mamdani has associated with overt jihadist sympathizers, including an imam who downplayed the September 11 attacks.

This moment was more than a dodge. It was a disservice to every Jewish New Yorker who has endured the city’s spiraling anti-Israel activism, and an affront to Rep. Elise Stefanik, the only major Republican leader with the courage to say publicly what others whisper privately: that Mamdani’s associations, rhetoric, and positions meet the definition.

Stefanik, predictably, responded with resolve. “If he walks like a jihadist, if he talks like a jihadist, if he supports jihadists, he’s a jihadist,” she said. “And he’s Kathy Hochul’s jihadist.”

She did not back down. She did not stutter. She did not pivot. She did what Trump did not: she told the truth.

Trump, meanwhile, publicly undercut her — handing Gov. Kathy Hochul a political gift and sabotaging Stefanik’s own gubernatorial challenge. For a man who prides himself on loyalty, this was treachery of the highest order.

Trump also remained silent on Mamdani’s sweeping socialist program, a blueprint for ideological domination that threatens the very functioning of New York City. Did Trump mention Mamdani’s pledge to halt ICE arrests of illegal immigrants? No. Did he confront Mamdani for wanting to defund the police, strip the NYPD Anti-Terror Unit, or “seize the means of production”? Not a word. Did he challenge Mamdani’s plans to disproportionately tax white neighborhoods, freeze rents indefinitely, make public transit free, launch city-run supermarkets, legalize prostitution, or eliminate gifted public-school programs? Silence.

Mamdani’s policies would bankrupt New York in under a year. They presuppose an endless supply of revenue extracted from wealthy residents who are already fleeing the state in record numbers. They reflect a fundamental hostility to capitalism itself — a worldview that sees enterprise not as a generator of prosperity but as something to be punished, dismantled, and controlled.

Trump, who once styled himself as the ultimate capitalist warrior, could not muster even one objection.

Why the Silence? Follow the Money.

The explanation, as always, lies in the shadows of global interests — and the desert sands of Qatar.

Trump’s business ties to Qatar run deep, including a massive multibillion-dollar golf development. The same Qatar that funded Mamdani’s filmmaker mother. The same Qatar that poured money into his mayoral campaign. The same Qatar that shelters Hamas leaders in luxury while fueling global anti-Israel agitation.

And then there is Saudi Arabia. Trump spent the week surrounded by Saudi elites whose geopolitical interests align neatly with promoting figures like Mamdani — men who weaken pro-Israel coalitions in the West and amplify anti-Zionist narratives at home.

Was Trump influenced? One does not have to believe he was bought to understand that he acted like a man who had been.

With one meeting — one bizarre display of friendliness — Trump has destroyed Republican momentum in New York City, undermined Stefanik’s campaign, alienated right-wing Jewish voters who stood by him even when it was unpopular,  and bolstered a socialist extremist at the very moment he should have been exposed.

He has done what Democrats could only dream of: he has fractured his own coalition and signaled that Jewish concerns are negotiable.

Jewish New Yorkers who trusted him are now left standing in the cold, watching as the man who once proclaimed himself Israel’s greatest ally bends over backward to normalize a mayor-elect who openly fraternizes with those who call for Jewish death.

This Was Not Just a Failure. It Was a Warning.

Trump’s behavior on Friday was not an aberration. It was a preview — of a man who can be swayed by foreign money, seduced by flattery, blinded by business deals, or lulled into complacency by dangerous actors who cloak extremism in the language of “progress.”

The question now is not whether Trump made a mistake.

It is whether he is capable of recognizing the enormity of it.

Because in refusing to challenge Zohran Mamdani, Trump did not merely fail. He abandoned the very people who defended him most fiercely — and empowered a movement that sees their destruction as a rallying cry.

And no amount of backtracking, spin, or future posturing will erase the memory of that silence.

Not now. Not ever.