Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser said she had a “great” meeting with President-elect Donald Trump on Monday, as he is slated to return to the White House in less than three weeks. Bowser, who was also the mayor during Trump’s first term in office,

Donald Trump has often cast Washington, DC, as an urban hellscape, but the city’s mayor, Muriel Bowser, said she had a “great meeting” with the president-elect on Monday and came away “optimistic that we will continue to find common ground.

Bowser’s optimistic tenor appears part of a strategy to collaborate with Trump rather than provoke him in a city where over 90 percent of voters rejected him.