Zohran Mamdani will be the unlikeliest mayor in New York City history. A 34-year-old backbench state assemblyman and self-proclaimed democratic socialist, Mamdani ran on the promise of affordability and was declared the winner not long after polls closed tonight. On his path to victory, he thrilled young voters in a way that few Democrats have in years. But perhaps no one was more delighted by his election than President Donald Trump.

Mamdani’s victory was his second decisive win over former Governor Andrew Cuomo, whom he defeated in the Democratic primary in June. (The current mayor, Eric Adams, skipped the primary, choosing instead to run as an independent, but dropped out of the race in September.) Cuomo’s father, Mario, another former governor, famously said, “You campaign in poetry; you govern in prose,” and Mamdani will soon have to trade his lofty rhetoric for the gritty municipal work of ensuring public safety, digging out from snowstorms, and confronting ever-widening income inequality. Previous New York mayors, of course, have had to take on those tasks, but Mamdani will also face a challenge unique to him: a brewing war with the president of the United States, himself a New Yorker.

Trump can no longer vote in the city that he called home for more than seven decades, but he got involved in the race anyway. He erroneously declared Mamdani a Communist and gave the younger Cuomo an eleventh-hour endorsement that the candidate, running as an independent, didn’t really want.