Boston Mayor Michelle Wu said she has no intention to cozy up with President Trump to secure more favorable treatment for the city, after learning of a friendly White House meeting between Trump and New York City’s new socialist mayor.
Unlike New York City’s Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, who met with Trump last Friday, Wu, a progressive Democrat reelected to a second term earlier this month, said she would not accept an invitation to the White House to meet with the Republican president.
“I’m not interested in a bromance with the federal regime,” Wu told reporters Monday at an unrelated event in Jamaica Plain.
Wu, who has been thrust into the national spotlight for her defiance of the Trump administration since her March testimony before a Republican-led Congressional oversight committee in defense of the city’s sanctuary policies and protections for illegal immigration, said she plans to stick to her guns.
“Every community has their unique and individual contexts, and every city leader, every university, every law firm, has to make their own decisions about how they handle this moment,” Wu said. “On my part, I am fighting as hard as I possibly can to stop the actions of a federal government that seems intent on attacking its own people.”
Mamdani and leaders of other communities may choose to try to broker a stronger working relationship with the Trump administration in light of threatened federal funding cuts, but Wu said that’s not the right approach.
“From my point of view, flattery is not the way,” Wu said. “Boston residents want us to stand strong on our values and to get things done and to keep moving forward, and that’s what we’re going to continue to do.”
Last week’s meeting between Trump and Mamdani, a respective Republican and socialist Democrat, was expected to be frosty, but turned out to be remarkably amiable, with both men speaking repeatedly of their shared goals to help Trump’s hometown rather than their combustible differences.
Trump, who had in the past called Mamdani a “100% communist lunatic” and a “total nut job,” spoke openly of how impressed he was with the man who had called his administration “authoritarian.”
Wu said she would only accept a similar invitation to meet with the president at the White House if he met a list of her demands.
“If (the invitation) came with a promise to stop snatching residents illegally off the streets, stop prosecuting his political enemies, stop cutting life-saving research and funding,” Wu said, “Sure, I would be open to a conversation at that point.”
Material from the Associated Press was used in this report.
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