When 'Harry' Trump met 'Sally' Mamdani

People like neat categories, especially when it comes to oppositional ones. India vs Pakistan, Rahul vs Modi, capitalists vs socialists, vegetarians vs non-vegetarians, pro-life vs pro-choice... This neat applecart gets upset when the binary, even momentarily, crumbles. So, it's only understandable that last week's cordial (read: gushfest) meeting between Zohran Mamdani and Donald Trump has left onlookers on both sides of the Marx-Hayek divide flummoxed. Friday's 'Not Dr Livingstone, I presume' meeting at the Oval Office was, indeed, the equivalent of watching a cat shake paws with a cucumber.

Many in the Left, convinced that Mamdani's radicalism could never coexist with Trump's hair-sprayed populism, began drafting conspiracy theories worthy of Reddit. Was Mamdani secretly auditioning for 'The Apprentice: Socialist Edition'? Did Trump mistake him for Saudi Arabia's bossman MbS? Meanwhile, Trump loyalists, who usually see communists lurking in oat milk, wondered if their leader had been body-snatched by a Brooklyn resident alien for future probing.

The meeting was cordial, polite - therefore, scintillating for being minus fireworks. The Mamdani-Trump summit signals when America's conspiracy-industrial complex finally jumped the shark, then accused the shark of being funded by Soros. As Zelenskyy wonders, 'What did Zohran have that I didn't?'