By Nathan Layne
WEST PALM BEACH, Florida (Reuters) – Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser said she had a great meeting with President-elect Donald Trump at his Florida resort and voiced optimism that they would find common ground despite their past clashes.
Bowser met Trump at his Mar-a-Lago home for about 45 minutes on Monday, a spokesperson for the mayor’s office said on Tuesday. The meeting was arranged at Bowser’s request, the spokesperson said.
The three-term Democratic mayor has had an adversarial relationship with Trump, a Republican who on the campaign trail threatened a federal takeover of Washington, a city he depicted as ineffectively managed and riddled with crime.
Bowser said in a statement late on Monday that the two discussed their shared priorities for Trump’s second term, which begins with his inauguration in Washington on Jan. 20.
“President Trump and I both want Washington, DC to be the best, most beautiful city in the world and we want the capital city to reflect the strength of our nation,” Bowser said.
“We discussed areas for collaboration between local and federal government, especially around our federal workforce, underutilized federal buildings, parks and green spaces, and infrastructure,” she said.
Trump did not comment on the meeting, and a spokesperson for his transition team did not provide details.
Bowser and Trump met in 2016 prior to his first inauguration, but their relationship was strained at times during his first term, flaring up in 2020 during Black Lives Matter protests that followed the death of George Floyd, a Black man killed by a white Minnesota police officer who knelt on his neck.
At the height of the protests, Bowser declared a small but symbolic patch of land opposite the White House “Black Lives Matter Plaza” and encouraged peaceful demonstrations while denouncing violence and looting.
When in May 2020 Trump threatened protesters who came near the White House with “vicious dogs” and “ominous weapons,” Bowser shot back with a comment calling Trump a “scared man” and accusing him of trying to divide the country.
During his 2024 campaign, Trump often derided Washington as poorly managed, taking aim at Bowser’s leadership. In a January 2024 speech in Las Vegas, he vowed to have the federal government grab control of Washington and “clean it up” so that it was “no longer a nightmare of murder and crime.”
While many U.S. cities saw a downturn in violent crime in 2023, Washington recorded 274 homicides, the highest level in more than two decades. Violent crime in the district has dropped sharply in 2024, however, with Metropolitan Police Department data showing there have been 190 homicides this year.
(Reporting by Nathan Layne in West Palm Beach, Florida; Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Howard Goller)
