Pete Davidson turned a late-night couch chat into a public plea for New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani to finally do something about the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway.
The 32-year-old comedian brought up the roadway Monday on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” after Kimmel mentioned that Mamdani would be sitting for an interview next.
Kimmel, 58, framed Davidson as someone with lifelong New York credibility and asked whether he had anything he wanted passed along to the mayor.
“Yes, could he fix the f—–g BQE, please?” Davidson cracked during the interview.
The studio audience instantly roared, giving Davidson’s highway complaint the kind of reaction comics usually want from an actual joke.
“You hit on something,” Kimmel noted.
Davidson looked toward the crowd as the applause kept going.
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Mayor @ZohranKMamdani: I love you, but I love housing more. pic.twitter.com/eLyeT1jwdh
— Headquarters (@HQNewsNow) September 29, 2026
“Look at that,” Davidson said. “That’s the loudest response I’ve ever gotten.”
The Brooklyn-Queens Expressway cuts through Brooklyn and Queens and has long been a sore spot for drivers frustrated by traffic congestion and aging infrastructure.
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Davidson’s version of the grievance was less about transit policy than the daily sight of cones, workers and what he described as construction that never seems to end.
“The BQE has been under construction since before I was born. And here’s my problem with it,” Davidson said. “They’re never doing anything. Someone’s just standing there eating a sandwich or on the phone, and there’s all these cones around.”
He then threw in a joke about who might be profiting from the never-ending mess.
“So I don’t know what mob front or whatever, who’s getting money from whatever, but just fix it, please,” Davidson added.
Kimmel told Davidson he would bring up the road when Mamdani took the guest chair.
“I’m going ask him about it. I will ask him about it,” Kimmel assured Davidson.
“Yeah, please!” Davidson replied.
By the end of Mamdani’s interview, Kimmel circled back to Davidson’s complaint and gave the mayor one more question to field.
“One more thing,” Kimmel told Mamdani.
“Hit me,” Mamdani responded with a smile.
Kimmel recapped Davidson’s frustration with driving by the expressway and seeing what looked like no work being done.
“Pete Davidson wants to know what’s going on in the BQE,” Kimmel said. “He says he drives by it and he sees nobody doing anything. He said it’s been like since before he was born.”
Mamdani pointed to the BQE Central Project, the $4 billion repair effort for the city-owned portion between Atlantic Avenue and Sands Street.
The mayor said the work is expected to start in 2030 and described the plan as a safety project that would keep traffic from being pushed into local neighborhoods.
“We’re gonna be putting a multi-billion dollar plan to actually repair the part the city owns,” Mamdani said.
“Which is the part that is currently the most at risk and that’s going to be proceeding over the next 10 years. Full safety. No diversion of traffic into local neighborhoods and actually bring it back.”
Kimmel turned the long repair schedule into another Davidson family punchline.
“So you’re saying Pete’s daughter will also be complaining about this,” Kimmel quipped as Mamdani and the audience laughed.
Mamdani also spent part of the appearance discussing his relationship with President Donald Trump, though Kimmel’s attempts to pull him into a Trump-bashing bit mostly bounced off the mayor.
Kimmel described the relationship as “unexpected” and asked whether Mamdani had made a deliberate effort to charm the president because New York needed help from Washington.
“Did you guys hit it off immediately or is it something that you really went into thinking, like, ‘OK, I need to have a relationship with the president of the United States and I think the best way to do it is to charm him?’ How did you do that and can you help me?” Kimmel asked.
Mamdani deflected the invitation to help Kimmel charm Trump.
“Sorry, brother,” the mayor responded.
Mamdani said he and Trump disagree on many issues, but he tried to keep their conversations centered on New Yorkers and city problems.
“And so, from that first meeting in November of last year, I was just thinking of, ‘How can we make this meeting not about us, but about New Yorkers? How can we spend that time talking about the things that could make life in the city that little bit easier?’ And that’s what it’s been whether we’ve met at the White House or at Gracie Mansion,” Mamdani commented.
The mayor said one of their recent topics has been Sunnyside Yard, a long-discussed proposal to build over a rail yard and create 12,000 homes and 30,000 jobs.
Mamdani described the project as the city’s largest housing development since the early 1970s.
Kimmel used the project’s name to pull the policy talk back into late-night territory.
“When you text him about Sunnyside, are you sure he doesn’t think you’re texting him about eggs?” Kimmel asked.
Mamdani said he was “pretty sure” and described the texts as normal, unlike Trump’s Truth Social posts.
Kimmel joked that Mamdani had “broken through” with Trump and suggested the mayor should relocate to Washington so he could hang around the Oval Office all day, then pressed him to send the president a selfie of the two of them.
“I love you, but I love housing more,” Mamdani responded.
Kimmel also floated Los Angeles as Mamdani’s next mayoral assignment before the discussion ended.
Trump first met with Mamdani last November and said the socialist mayor could “surprise some conservative people,” adding, “The better he does, the happier I am.”
Their Feb. 26 Oval Office meeting also stayed friendly as Mamdani sought federal support for the New York housing plan.
“I can tell you that Sunnyside is a big job. I’ve been watching it for 35 years,” Trump said at their latest meeting. “I would say that was a very federally oriented job. You’ll need a lot of federal funding and probably federal approvals.”
Trump also said affordable housing would need to be built into the project.
“I know a lot about affordability because I did that housing,” Trump said. “I did a lot of low-income and moderate-income housing over the years. I think Sunnyside would have to have a pretty substantial component of that.”
Trump framed Mamdani’s success as a better outcome for the city than seeing him fail.
“If I had the choice of him being a bad mayor or a horrible mayor, I don’t want that. I want him to be a great mayor. And he’s certainly got potential. Got great potential,” Trump said.