Dr. Ben Carson told Newsmax on Friday that the planned meeting between President Donald Trump and New York Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani will test whether two leaders with "diametrically opposed ideologies" can find any meaningful common ground.
Carson, secretary of Housing and Urban Development in Trump's first term, told "American Agenda" that Mamdani's campaign rhetoric — which repeatedly targeted capitalism and the president — underscores the gulf the pair will bring into the discussion.
"America became great based on the can-do attitude, not 'what can you do for me,' which is what socialism is all about," said Carson, who is Trump's national adviser for nutrition, health and housing at the Department of Agriculture.
He argued that the socialist policies Mamdani has championed "destroy the future" and have failed everywhere they have been tried.
Still, Carson said he hopes the two can at least agree on improving quality of life for New Yorkers. One possible area, he noted, is affordability — an issue Trump has emphasized nationally and Mamdani has highlighted locally.
Carson pointed to housing costs that have skyrocketed past wage growth, recalling that his first home cost $126,000, compared with roughly $571,000 for the same property today. The core of the affordability crisis, he argued, is bureaucratic overreach.
"We've made progress in terms of our building procedures, and we just need to approach this with some common sense and not layer after layer of regulation," he said, adding that during Trump's first term, HUD eliminated more than 2,000 regulations to reduce housing costs.
Carson reacted strongly to a clip from Mamdani's election-night victory speech in which the mayor-elect vowed to "dismantle the very conditions" that allowed Trump to gain power. Carson said the remark reflects a broader ideological clash: socialists wanting "a complex, very large government" vs. Trump's push to return "decisions and money" to individuals.
Carson predicted the public will ultimately reject socialist proposals.
"The American people are actually a lot smarter than the socialists think they are," he said, "and they will sit down and make a comparison and recognize that's not the direction they want to go in."
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