President Donald Trump denied reports that he is pressuring current New York City Mayor Eric Adams and Republican mayoral candidate Curtis Silwa to drop out of the city’s mayoral race in an effort to boost former Gov. Andrew Cuomo‘s chances against Democratic front-runner Zohran Mamdani.
“No, I don’t like to see a communist become mayor, I will tell you that,” Trump said when asked by a reporter Thursday evening.
Yet, the president also conceded that he did want the race to narrow down to just two candidates.
“I don’t think you can win unless you have one-on-one because somehow he’s gotten a little bit of a lead. … I have no idea how that happened,” Trump said of Mamdani, a socialist. “I would like to see two people drop out and have it be one-on-one. And I think that’s a race that could be won.”
The New York Times recently reported that the Trump administration was even considering offering both Adams and Silwa positions to clear the field for the formerly disgraced Cuomo, who is running as a third-party candidate after losing the Democratic primary in June to Mamdani.
Cuomo rejected Trump’s help during a Thursday press conference. “I don’t want him involved in anything to do with my race,” Cuomo said.
“The White House has not contacted me, and I’m not interested in a job with the Whitehouse,” said Silwa in a statement. “My focus is right here in New York. I’m the only candidate on a major party line who can defeat Mamdani, and I’m committed to carrying this fight through to Election Day. The people of New York City deserve a mayor who truly cares.”
Trump’s comments came as he and first lady Melania Trump hosted tech leaders at the State Dining Room to discuss artificial intelligence after rain forced the White House to move the event from the newly renovated Rose Garden.
Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, OpenAI founder Sam Altman, and Google CEO Sundar Pichai were among the top tech leaders at the dinner.
The president also appeared to downplay the Bureau of Labor Statistics’s jobs report that will be announced on Friday. This is the first report from the bureau following Trump’s controversial ouster of BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarfer last month due to a disappointing jobs report.
MELANIA TRUMP URGES AI EDUCATION AT TASK FORCE MEETING: ‘NO LONGER SCIENCE FICTION’
“Well, we’re going to have to see. … I don’t know, they come out tomorrow. But the real numbers that I’m talking about are going to be whatever it is but will be in a year from now,” he said when asked to commit to Friday’s report, “when these monstrous, huge, beautiful places — they’re palaces of genius, and when they start opening up, you’re seeing, I think you’ll see job numbers that are going to be absolutely incredible.”
“Right now,” Trump continued, “it’s a lot of construction numbers, but you’re going to see job numbers like our country has never seen.”