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We're sitting down with the mayor here in Gracie Mansion, and the first thing we want to talk about with the mayor is the National Guard. You know, Donald Trump said just yesterday, if these mayors can't control their streets, we will, and he listed New York among the cities under review for National Guard deployment. Do you believe this is a real threat to New York?
Well, the partnership between the federal government and the city and state government, it's extremely important, and I think there's a role we need. My role is to make sure New York are safe, and the numbers are shown. We're doing that, and the partnership of making sure guns don't come into our city, and that's what we want to
continue to do with the federal government. We are ready collaborate with the federal government every morning ten am with the height of city, state and federal authorities to go after shooters and those who bring guns into our cities.
When he talks about the National Guard coming here to New York and in the event that happens, is there anything you do to counteract that? I mean, you know, what would it look like if National Guards members you saw in DC two thousand of them on the streets of Washington, if they were here, you know, on ninetieth Street.
Well, the goal is the relationship between the federal government and DC is different than the relationship between New York City and the federal government. And again, our communications with the federal government is we got this. We moved over twenty three thousand legal guns off our streets. We see it well, witnessing records levels of decreasing crimes, homicides and shootings in the first six months and shooting victims in
the first seven months. And so we are very clear, always have been, I have never moved away from the public safety. That's the prerequisite to our prosperity. And we're going to continue to do an amazing job. And if the federal government wants to communicate with us and ask us to go to other municipalities and help them see what we're doing, we're willing to do that because they're safe. America is a safe New York City and we want to help any way we can.
Yeah, I want to ask you about November election as it relates to that. You know, one of your opponents, Andrew Cuomo has said, if Mom Donnie gets in office, then Trump takes control of New York City, then Trump does put the National Guard here. Do you think that could happen?
Andrew will say anything to anyone to get elected. He created this, He passed the cannabis laws. I had to close down fifteen hundred cannabis shops because of the failed law he passed.
He did the bill reform.
That's the revolving door criminal justice system that we're looking at. He closed psychiatric beds. So every time you see someone put someone on the subway track because of severe mental health illness or stab three yearnits in New Yorkers, you have to ask yourself, why do we close those beds? Raise the age we're seeing young people are victims of crimes more and more, and their shooters as well.
These so all of his bills, I had to.
Fix, his mess and so Madonni's call to defund police, his calls to legalized prostitution, his clothes to calls to empty right As Island. They are two of the same people. New York has come too far to go backwards with either one of them.
When I heard the President talk yesterday about cash list bail. You know, I immediately thought of you because you have been one of the people who has talked about bail reform. Your police commissioner talked about bill reform. On Friday with the friendly fire incident involving the officer, the President signing an executive order directing DOJ to look at these jurisdictions that have done cashless bail.
What's your take on that.
Well, I've been clear and I don't believe if someone steals in Apple that we should hold them in jail because they can't afford to get out. But if you are possessing an illegal weapon, you commit one of the seven major crime categories, and I'll sit you are.
Repeatedly an offender.
We need to look at the criminal justice system that allows you to continue to go back and you repeat the crime. We saw what happened with the Custom Border Patrol agent. These were repeated offenders. We just had a shooting over the weekend of the individuals in job involved. They had several gun arrests that just can't continue to happen, and so using bail appropriately, I think it would help us deal with the public safety issue we're facing in the city.
The President said, you know, crimes continue to rise when they have castles spail. Is that something that's happened here in the city.
When you remove bail on those who commit serious crimes, it will impact your public safety. We are witnessing that over and over again.
The school system comes back next week. Should parents fear for ICE to be in their schools? You know in Washington that was a big fear as they went back to school yesterday with ICE saying that they may come to some schools of students. We saw a student in Queens six years old deported by ICE with our mother.
With a family, and so we wanted to be clear ICE has not been in our schools. Ice the only way they could come into the schools with clear judicial warrants or if they are looking at a condition with someone that's fleeing running into the school a dangerous person. But that's the role of our police officers to do so, and we have been extremely consistent around this.
Children should go to school.
They're not going to be fearful of having ICE come into their schools. Their directives indicate that as well. People should go to the hospital if they need medical care. They should call the police if they need police assistant, and I know personally what happens when you fail to do that. My rookie years as a police officer had a Chinese immigrant that was afraid to call the police when he was being robbed. I took actions while I was off duty, but he was extremely fearful. People can't
live in the shadows. That creates disorder, and we don't want that.
Let's go back to your career in a transit police that's where you met Ingrid Lewis Martin's husband, obviously someone you've known a long time. I just you know, we heard from you on Friday. But what did when you hear some of the allegations in the indictment and you know, indictments just show a piece of what is being alleged. And what did you make of of the some of the allegations you heard?
Well, first of all, let's think about this for a moment. Uh.
Like I said, Ingrid's like a sister to me, and uh, I'm pretty sure you have close relationships in your life and the worst thing you want to do is not allow people their due process. And when you're dealing with criminal cases, every road you say could harm that person who's dealing with that case, and I'm not going to do anything to harm someone that like a sister to me. I'm very clear she's in my prayers. She has an attorney, and anything that's dealing with that case should be brought
to her attorney. I would not do anything that's going to be harmful to someone that's alect a sister to.
How would you say your week was last week because you had the situation with Ingrid Jesse Jesse Hamilton as well, and then you also had the situation with Winnie Greco. Just what your thoughts on what happened with Winny Greco? And then also you know it was you know, I saw it by Friday, it.
Was it was a week. Yeah, No, not to me.
I had tunire thirty seven thousand MicroC and assignment seekers. I inherited COVID, I inherited the city that was imaging jobs.
I had thousands of illegal guns.
On our streets, ghost cars on our streets, cannabis shops are open, people rode off New york Is. Not only was I dealing with those who were committing crimes, had to deal with rats everywhere. But look everywhere that we dealt with, we got up every day and we did the job.
But the more jobs, the red envelope in and a potato chip bag, I mean, when you heard about so, what do you think of it?
First? I want to go back.
More jobs in our city history, twelve months of tourism, twelve months of Broadway the best in the city's history, unemployment drop crime, drop illegal vehicles off our street, all of those things. I'm not gonna be judged by a red envelope in a paper bag. I'm gonna be judged by how how I improve the lives of New Yorkers. It was a stupid thing to do. I don't understand the conversations she had with the reporter. I don't have the history of it. It's not something that we would
do in our campaign. I made that clear. I don't know what that was about. And now she's no longer volunteering, or she was never employee of the campaign, and she was long time, no longer in a city hall, So only the reporter and Winnie can explain to us exactly what that was about. I don't know what it was about, and it's not acceptable behavior on my part.
Let's talk campaign, because we've talked about the campaign plenty of times, private meetings, public meetings, you know, where have you? You're polling in the single digits behind Mamdani. You know, I've heard you talk about, you know, the state of the race when you were running last time, but that was sort of during the primary. Now we're in the general election. Just tell me sort of what your strategies to win in November and how you think you could pull through.
Well, a couple of things, As I said over and over again, when you look at this distance from the primary to the election, this same time period, Madonnie was at one percent. No one called for him to step out of the race, and if we did, we would have been premature because he won the primary. And we need to be clear that that seemed to be a
fact that everyone is missing. We also missing the fact that I was in third place in twenty twenty one, behind Andrew Yang who was beating me by double digits. Some Poles have me in double digits, some poles have me single digits. Poles had Andrew up, Andrew Cuomo up by ten percent before the election, he lost by twelve percent. He was up thirty six percent. So when you start to talk about the polls. The only poll that matter is on election day, who's going to have the most votes.
I must do what I'm good at doing.
Campaigning, get my information out to the public so they can see the success of where we were and where we are. This city has turned around. I mean, if we want to be honest about it or not. And I have to explain that to the voters.
So the messages. Eric Adams is staying in no matter what, Yes, you're not signing any pledge.
Yes, I'm saying in no matter what. Who created the pledge? Andrew?
You know, one candidate that was at one percent in the poll all of a sudden said whoever's up by a certain number in September should win.
That's all Andrew's creation.
Trust me when I tell you he creates these scenarios so that people can believe he's doing the right thing. Was he lost the race thirty five million dollars up by double digits, didn't get out in campaign, and he lost the race.
People heard his message already.
Let's get to some bloomberg topics here. You know, one of your biggest accomplishments that you've stated has been city of Yes, just tell me you know what it took to get that through. Housing a big issue for you know, voters and for people who own homes here, who want to own homes here, you have a lack of places to put homes. For City of Yes change that just you know, explain how that's worked out.
In so many ways.
You know, many people talk about affordability but never used their offices to actually produce affordability. Like I said, five people running for office, Three people don't have a record.
One person is running from his record. I have a record.
A City of Yes is going to produce housing throughout the city because housing New York is is not just a Manhattan or Brooklyn or areas that were juentrified gentrified.
It's the entire city.
Never before have we witnessed this most comprehensive of housing and rezoning policy in the history of our city. We have built, renovated, and planned rezoning for four hundred and twenty six thousand units of housing in the next decade. I mean, this is unbelievable when you think about it. We did it in three and a half years. That number is larger than twelve years of Bloomberg, eight years of the Blasio combined in three and a half years.
We are the most housing forward administration in the history of this city. And we got projects off the ground that many have tried, like Willia's point, twenty four hundred units of affordable housing Flushing Airport of hundreds of using of units of affordable housing, Union built. And so City of Yes is part of the overall package that we're doing five rezonings in each Budy borough, fifty fifty thousand
units of housing that's coming out of that. So we know New Yorkers must be housed, but you got to match housing with using the resources of city to make the city affordable, decreasing the course of childcare, universal childcare, no income tax for low income New Yorkers, none at all of what we have done.
Well, that sounds that sounds like, you know, like no income tax for low income New Yorkers, sounds a lot like a Mom Donnie proposal. And you know that that requires going to Albany to get that done. People may say, you know, you've been in office for you know, nearly four years. You know, how can you haven't been able to get that done? You know, just make the case for how you could get that done, you know, with four more years.
Well, no, where he got it done. There is no income tax for low income New Yorkers. And then what you do is each year you go to Albany. They call it a ten cup day for you go up there to bag for your proposal. But look at each year, each year we got exactly the things we ask for. Mail control, we got the new income tax, we got housing reform of renovating our office spaces into permanent housing and low income housing. We got the public safety initiative,
we got the involuntary removal. So you're seeing each year we brought back what we needed from the city.
And so in three years and eight months we've.
Done a great job of ponding with our Albany lawmakers.
And that's Mayor Eric Adams talking directly to Bloomberg terminal customers and listeners all around the world.