Memo to Wu.
It doesn’t work that manner, Michelle.
You, the mayor of Boston, don’t ask the President of america to satisfy with you. You ask to satisfy with him.
That’s what leaders of nations around the globe do once they need to sit down with President Donald Trump, essentially the most highly effective chief on the planet. They ask to come back to the White Home.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy involves Washington. Trump doesn’t go to Kyiv.
Additionally it is the best way Zohran Mamdani, the Democrat Socialist mayor-elect of New York, received to satisfy with Trump within the White Home final week. He requested for the assembly.
Now, for those who had been Kevin White, the late flamboyant four-term (1967-1984) imperial mayor of Boston, who thought of himself a nationwide determine, it is likely to be completely different.
Not for nothing was he dubbed “the Mayor of America.”
He additionally had the swagger to tug such a public relations stunt off.
When he lastly left workplace, he didn’t go away any swagger behind. He took it with him, which is why no mayor since “Kevin from Heaven” has matched his nationwide renown.
However that was 4 mayors (and one appearing mayor) in the past, and instances have modified.
Swagger is out and socialism is in, and socialism makes for unusual bedfellows.
Additionally, socialists haven’t any swagger as a result of they, like panhandlers, are all the time in search of a handout.
Which is why Mamdani, a Muslim Democrat Socialist, received to the White Home to satisfy with Christian Republican capitalist President Trump. He went looking for a handout.
Speak in regards to the odd couple: a capitalist who made thousands and thousands by an open and free market economic system and a socialist who desires to take these thousands and thousands away to distribute to individuals who didn’t earn them.
But that they had one thing in widespread, and it was that each are winners.
Regardless of all odds, each got here from behind to win campaigns few thought they might– Trump again in 2016 and 2024 and Mamdani in 2025.
Trump likes winners. And regardless of Mamdani’s off-the-wall socialism, Trump was impressed with Mamdani’s victory, noting how he doggedly rose within the polls as his New York marketing campaign developed.
“He actually ran an unimaginable race towards some very powerful individuals, sensible individuals,” Trump mentioned of his new good friend. He added, “The higher he does the happier I’m.”
Michelle Wu additionally ran an unimaginable race, so unimaginable that she ended up with no November opponent after she trounced Josh Kraft within the major and he threw within the towel.
However she received no kudos from Trump who in all probability didn’t discover within the first place. Boston, in any case, Boston is not any New York. No place is.
Wu, nonetheless, has been dogged and constant in her criticism of Trump, notably over his crackdown on unlawful immigrants, prison and in any other case in Boston, a sanctuary metropolis.
Which she is entitled to do as mayor.
Nonetheless, she is considerably coy and disarming in relation to visiting Trump on the White Home.
She mentioned, Kevin White-like, that she would flip down an initiation– that she didn’t get within the first place—and would solely settle for one t underneath her phrases anyway.
“I’d settle for the invitation if it got here with a promise to cease snatching residents illegally off the streets, cease prosecuting his (Trump’s) political enemies, cease slicing life-saving analysis and funding…Certain, I’d be open to a dialog at that time.”
Kevin White would have added that the assembly happen at Metropolis Corridor and never the White Home.
However White took the swagger with him when he left the constructing.
Veteran political reporter Peter Lucas may be reached at: peter.lucas@bostonherald.com
