President Donald Trump must directly confront New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani on his "anti-Jewish, anti-Israel rhetoric" when he meets with him at the Oval Office, Harvard Law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz said on Newsmax Friday, before the face-to-face meeting was to be held.
"I would hope that the president would confront Mamdani and say, look, we can work together, but I can't work with a bigot. I can't work with an anti-Semite," Dershowitz told Newsmax's "Wake Up America."
He added that he wants Trump to tell Mamdani that he "can't [work with] somebody who is prepared to attack the Jewish people or Zionism, who won't recognize our most important ally in the Middle East, Israel's right to exist as the nation-state of the Jewish people."
Trump and Mamdani, a democratic socialist whom the president has accused of being a communist, will likely be able to cooperate on some areas, Dershowitz acknowledged, but he pointed out that there has been some unrest after Mamdani's election.
"Even before he's the mayor of New York, in his name we see people protesting in front of my synagogue," he said. "Threatening and intimidating, we're seeing that all over ... we're seeing the Mamdani effect already with increased violence against the Jewish community."
Pressed on which version of Mamdani might appear for the meeting, the polished campaigner or the more ideological figure criticized by opponents, Dershowitz said Trump should expect an effort at charm.
"Oh, of course, the smiling, good-looking, articulate Mamdani, who fooled so many New Yorkers, including so many Jews," will be at the meeting, said Dershowitz.
But he argued that the mayor-elect's public presentation would not sway Trump.
"He's not going to fool Donald Trump," he said. "Donald Trump is [too] smart to be taken by that rhetoric."
He noted that Trump "has already told us what he thinks of Mamdani."
Even so, Dershowitz said political realities mean the two will have to work together.
"He's going to have to work with him because not only is he the mayor of New York," he said, "but we're going to see mayors in Seattle, San Francisco, probably Minneapolis, other big blue cities who are replicas of Mamdani."
He warned that the spread of this political trend will pose difficulties not just for the administration, but for communities across the country.
"And that's going to be very, very difficult for the president and most important, for the American people," he said.
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