Memo to Wu.
It doesn’t work that approach, Michelle.
You, the mayor of Boston, don’t ask the President of the US to fulfill with you. You ask to fulfill with him.
That’s what leaders of nations all over the world do after they need to sit down with President Donald Trump, essentially the most highly effective chief on the planet. They ask to return to the White Home.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy involves Washington. Trump doesn’t go to Kyiv.
Additionally it is the way in which Zohran Mamdani, the Democrat Socialist mayor-elect of New York, obtained to fulfill with Trump within the White Home final week. He requested for the assembly.
Now, when you 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 totally 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 depart 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 performing mayor) in the past, and occasions 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 at all times in search of a handout.
Which is why Mamdani, a Muslim Democrat Socialist, obtained to the White Home to fulfill with Christian Republican capitalist President Trump. He went looking for a handout.
Discuss in regards to the odd couple: a capitalist who made hundreds of thousands by way of an open and free market financial system and a socialist who needs to take these hundreds of thousands away to distribute to individuals who didn’t earn them.
But they’d one thing in frequent, 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, good individuals,” Trump stated of his new pal. 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 main and he threw within the towel.
However she obtained no kudos from Trump who most likely didn’t discover within the first place. Boston, in any case, Boston isn’t any New York. No place is.
Wu, nonetheless, has been dogged and constant in her criticism of Trump, significantly over his crackdown on unlawful immigrants, legal and in any other case in Boston, a sanctuary metropolis.
Which she is entitled to do as mayor.
Nevertheless, she is considerably coy and disarming on the subject of visiting Trump on the White Home.
She stated, 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 beneath her phrases anyway.
“I might 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 chopping life-saving analysis and funding…Positive, I might 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
