Joining me now to discuss the new Trump administration in New York City, along with a bevy of other things, is the Mayor of New York City himself, mister Eric Adams, an honor and a privileged How you're doing, It's good to.
See you south side outside. That's just telling you we used to come out to Hollands and take y'all short.
Well. You know what they didn't tell you is that we really didn't want them because we loved the ladies in Cabria Heights and Lawington. It was other areas the Hollands. So he's like, okay, you do what you do.
You got some nice catscaders, without question, a lot of quality came out.
I grew up with run dmc ll cool J was right down the Black Fire, you know, five minutes away Farmers Boulevard, and you know, you know, John rul Fitty said that a whole bunch of cats came from from from the house.
You know, you know what brother, working class people brooking class values. You know, mom bro daycare center be up every day, led by example homeowners. You know our you know, many of our values come from what we saw and the community raised us right. It wasn't just appearance as a community. So we're going to get into all of that, mister Mayor.
But my first order of businesses is that today, of all days, you are the talk of New York City. Right now, everybody's talking about you. You're stealing headlines on what have you because you talked about how you haven't left the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party.
Has left you.
That's the court everybody's been parading around all over the place. Right now as we sit here today, how are you feeling about your administration, what you've accomplished, and most importantly, the support or lack thereof you've received from the Democratic Party.
Well, and it's out of the theme of the working class people.
And when you stop talking about working class issues and people are hurting, and you having this intellectual conversation and have a philosophical approach of just addressing what are people feeling every day? And I have never left the streets on the subways. I was stopping the middle of the night when barbershops close down. I would go inside and sit down, smoke a cigar, drink a little hendessy with the people inside and just feel them. And they're saying
that the party is not talking to us. And when I say the party, I'm not talking about people who are registered Democrats. I'm talking about those who are putting out the messages of what is important to the Democratic Party, and they have left the average broking class person and individuals. And that is what I'm trying to say to the party that you know, it's not like I abandoned the party. The party has abandoned of what broking class people have been fighting for.
You know, you deal with this and you will continue to deal with this a hell of a lot more than me. I'm just your friendly neighborhood sports reporter that adventures in the other areas of discussion. But I've been taking a lot of heat because of my willingness to call out some of the things that I've seen from
the Democratic Party. And it's almost like this supposed to be this onus, this level of obligation as black men that we're supposed to have to the Democratic Party, And clearly you're being challenged on that now because of the positions and the stances that you have been willing to take as a black man, not just the mayor of New York City. How do you feel when you hear people come to you with that kind of attitude.
List, brother, this is going to be one hell of a conversation.
Man.
People don't even realize what it is to be a man of color, to be in charge of the most important city on the globe. We need to really understand that I'm the mayor of the most important city on the globe only the second mayor of color. Mayor Dinkin's was the first, and I'm the second. I inherited a city that was engulfed in COVID twenty and twenty thousand microsohen asylum seekers. Crime was through the roof. Unemployment with black and brown people.
Was high.
You were looking at our children were not learning. I've been on Riker's Island more than any other mayor in the history of the city, speaking to inmates and correction officer, who both are overwhelmingly black and brown. And so when you look at what I inherited, and then you fast forward to today, with all that we've gone through, we have more jobs in the city's history, More small businesses are open. Black and brown businesses have received billions of
dollars in contracts from the city. We have outpaced the state and read it and math. We're doing dyslexia screening so that we won't have thirty percent of our prison population being dyslexic. Like I am of what we have done in the city, paying for college soution for forced to care children. Bond raiders looked at the city and said, we're going to increase your bond because the way you're
managing the crisis. With two hundred and twenty thousand micros and asylum seekers dropped in our city without any support, We've turned around this city and there are a lot of it is out there that don't want to acknowledge what this administration have done. Why do you think that is Well, I think it's a combination of things. I was never the chosen candidate. I'm a bald headed earring where in Maya that's saying that you don't have to have this one stereotypical look to.
Be successful in the city.
And I think that there's a lot of people that want to send this signal that Okay, you can't run the city. I'm running the city, and I'm running and navigating us out of crisis, and I'm independent in doing so. You know, there are days at a wake up feeling one way in another way, and we need to be clear on taking these big cities to the next level.
Is that part of the problem, though, mister Mayor, in terms of the you know, the conflict, the confrontations, the resistance that you may ultimately encounter. Is it the fact that you wake up with independent voice as opposed to being a slave to this binary system that we live in. And it is either take one side or the other. It's all one way or the thing another way. That's what basically folks have been saying for the longest time,
and people like yourself seem to be given the impression. Nah, I'm not down for that anymore.
Right.
You know, you look at those who want to check off a box and if you don't fit into all of these items in the box, then you can't be classified as.
This group or another group.
And that's not who we are as individuals and as human beings. We have different beliefs and belief systems, and I focus on that all the time.
And this is not new.
People fell and realized go back thirty something years when I was winning the police department and one hundred blacks and law enforcement who cared I didn't want.
To be a cop.
I was arrested and beat by police officers at fifteen years old.
REVN.
Herbert Daughtry told me, you are going into the police department to fight from within. Wow, you know. And when we went in, people call me uncle Tom, sellout, nigro. But we went in and started one of the most important human rights and civil rights organization as black police officers. And so there's a long record of looking at my assignment and fulfilling my assignment.
Brother, I can't even tell you how painful.
It was to say I put on that uniform of those who take me and my groin over and over again. My brother and I we were pissing blood for weeks after being assaulted by those cops in the basement of one hundred and third Precinct.
And before you became a captain, if I remember correctly based on my research, before you became a captain within the police department, you were an officer literally speaking out against racism and prejudice all the time, which I might imagine didn't endear you to your colleagues and contemporaries and boys and blue.
You know, and know, it was interesting that many people didn't realize that many of those officers would come to me and say, you know, thank you for what you're doing, because they wanted to go home to their families, and they knew that there was a number of cops that were overly aggressive and abusive, and by us talking out it allowed them to not have to get caught up in that whole web that.
We were dealing with.
And that's the same I took into the state centate, took it to the being the first person of color to be ball president and too now to become the mayor.
I'm the same cat, brother.
Listen, listen, well, listen. If you're the same, more power to you, because, to be honest with you, I don't know if you need to be the same. I think you've already proven who you are. You don't really really need to be the same. You can mix it up a little bit. But I'm just looking at some of the things. I'm thinking about crime, I'm thinking about the local economy. I'm thinking about joblessness, all of these issues
that have been addressed during your administration. What things have been like for you since COVID and how basically so many jobs have been restored et cetera, et cetera. What's been the greatest challenge for you sitting in that seat as mayor of New York City, particularly over the last come.
I love that. That's a great question.
The failure to acknowledge the success and our media. That's why this show is so important, our media in the city of the failure every day, if you go back and look at from the time to office, we've been under fire, and the failure to acknowledge the recovery of jobs, cycling us out of COVID, managing two hundred twenty thousand micros and asylum seekers and one hundred and se hundred and eighty thousand on their way of what we're doing
around recovering the economy of this city. You don't read about any of that, do you know, even when.
You talk about it. In our transit system.
When I go into rooms and I say tell me how many crimes you think we have in the subway every day, people say two hundred and.
Three hundred and four hundred. We have four point.
Six million riders a day. We have six crime felony crimes a day. But when you read this city from abroad or in another state, you say this is a city out of control. This is the safest big city in America. I just acknowledge today with the police commissioner. We removed twenty thousand illegal guns off our street, fourteen hundred ghost guns of our streets. Shootings and homicides are down, Crime is down. This city's the safest big city.
Let me throw this at you. You know what doesn't make sense to me? What doesn't make sense to me based on what you just articulated. There was an election that was coming about this past November. We know who won, we know what happened prior to that election.
The media has been accused of being the liberal media.
For the longest time. So one would think when you considered the imagery that was emanating from the right as they talked about crime in the streets and pestilence and homelessness and migrant crisis and all of these different things, those kind of things that you just articulated, one would think that the liberal media would jump, would pounce at the opportunity to articulate that message to the masses, because it would have served their purpose in support of somebody
on a left, in this case, Kamala Harris winning the election. Yet you're sitting here saying that did not happen. How do you explain it.
They didn't highlight their message. They didn't highlight the largest city in America. They didn't highlight a person of color as mayor lifting up this city. There was sess story that should have been the talking point for the Democratic Party. A working class mayor, thirty billion dollars back in the pockets of everyday working class people.
Kindling two billion in medical debts.
You are think about that, unred thousand New Yorkers, think about that.
Okay, five hundred thousand New Yorkers, We're going to cancel their medical debt. That's the number one course of bankruptcy, and particularly for black and brown people. So there was a narrative here in the city that we could have talked about instead of that. There was a lot of anger because I was saying to them, you got two hundred and twenty thousand micros and asylum seekers coming to the city, and you guys are not being responsible about securing our borders.
I'm thinking about what you just said. I'm thinking about the fact that when ultimately you indicted by the federal government on fraud or fraudulent affraud chargers, along with other things. You were the first mayor to be criminally charged while in office in the history of New York City. Much of a role do you believe that played in what wasn't disseminated as it pertains to your administrations?
I think a lot, brother, And you know, many people never read the indictment. Please, and if you read the indictment, you're going to see that, you know, at the heart of this is that I was doing my job of telling the Fight Apartment, can you do an inspection on the building. This is something when I sit down with my colleagues, they say, Eric, are you kidding me? You know,
because this is what we do as governmental officials. And I was saying the other day on the other talk show of you know, brother, how hard as it is to just sit back and watch me, I have to take all these body blows right now and can't defend myself something that I've always.
Lawyers tell you to be quiet, don't say anything.
It's sick, you know, And so it's imperative for me when you're doing analysis of not only would I said have said, Biden said his Justice Apartment is political webinars, websized weapons, wepiniws, politicized, it's all the same size, right.
Trump said it.
And when I saw A Biden's speech and why he impeached his family members, he talked about him, many people didn't read that that. When you go through prosecutions like this, it's not only your guilty and innocence, it's the it's the financial impact on it. It's just the embarrassment. I spent two million dollars. Brother, I'm a civil service. What does a civil service get two million dollars from?
You? Know? You have to you have to be able to have people who believe.
In you enough to donate to your public support exactly exactly.
And so I'm looking at it and listen, pardon clements. Granted clemency to a few folks. Don't know those kinds of things. That's what President Biden has done. And we'll get into that in just a couple of minutes or so. But in light of that, along with campaign finance charges,
that's what they're throwing at you as well. You still have been to determined to run for re election in twenty twenty five, like that cases coming up in April re election, you know, you know, right, wow, what kind of message you said about it by continuing to stay in this.
And I love that. Man.
That's a powerful question because many people are in dark places in their personal lives. And you know, Mommy used to say, a dark place is not a burial, it's a planted And you know, brother, you know, as you know with your parents, you know your dad, and you know, raising the family, a family of six, I'm the same right right, you know, And Mommy loved all of us, but she adored me, you know, same here and brother, I used to walk past Mommy's door and raising us
on our own. I would hear in that that that room at night crying, you know, not knowing that she was going to be feed up, to feed us, to keep a roof on her head. But you know what, every morning she got up, she got And so in the first two weeks of that indictment, people that I had sleep on my couches when they were thrown out of their homes, people who their children were arrested, and I went down and stood with them, people who I stood in the hospitals.
With when they were going through terrible times.
They were tripping over themselves saying you need to step down, you need to step down. It broke my heart. I'm not even gonna lie to you, but I said to myself and I thought of Mommy. She died and during my election, I said, you know, Mommy never stepped down.
She stepped up.
And with all that we were going through, we still moved the city forward and we knew that had the right team to get it done. And I'm hoping that people who are in dark places right now, if you're a young man that's sending in ryk As Island in jail cell, you're gonna say, listen, my mayor was arrested.
If you're a young.
Person, would learn the disability my mayor has dyslexia. I want people to look and see my life and say, don't ever give up, and don't let anyone defy who you are what you are. I know who I am, and I'm gonna fight like hell to make sure people know that.
Are you gonna fight like hell or make sure your you win the case or that you are proven to be innocent because there's a difference with the voters.
Right there's I think the pathway to justice come in many different ways, and one should not allow anyone to block their pathway to justice. It's the role of my attorney, Alex Spiro, to ensure that we pursue every pathway to justice.
I did nothing wrong.
I should not have been charged, and his his his job to pursue my justice. My job is that I was elected to represent the city of New York and on every area I have never abandoned that responsibility.
You reportedly went to visit President Donald Trump at Mara a Lago prior prior to the inauguration. What can you tell us about that and is it really about what people are saying. It's about you're hoping that in the event something goes down and you find yourself being convicted of this of these allegations, that he's going to parton you.
And think about that four twelve moment. This is the president of the United States. I'm the mayor of the largest city in America that lost six point five billion dollars due to the previous administration inability to finance a micro crisis. Why are people asking, is the mayor of the largest city in America going down to meet with the president to talk about how do we recoup some of those losses and how do we ensure that we move our city forward. It would be irresponsible for me
not to go down and speak with the president. And hats off to him. He met with me days before his inaugeration. You know that says a lot about his love for the city, and that says a lot of how much respect he had for this administration on what we are doing. I had to go down to Washington, I mean to Florida to speak with the president.
It sounds like it makes a whole lot of sense to me, and I don't have any issue with it. But you're going to have critics out there of Mayor Eric Adams of New York City's primary reason you went down there is because of your legal your personal legal issues, and that that is the priority over the other issues that you just brought up, mainly six point five billion dollars that you're trying to recoup. To that, you say, what.
Let's I say the same thing I say in New York often time, and I'm speaking to the media. I have eight point three New Yorkers, I have thirty five million opinions.
It's that's what it is.
You're not doing anything if you don't have people who are going to be attacking you. So the numerical minority with the largest voices that are constantly consistently from the day I took office, have consistently talked about everything I am not, even though we showed the success. Though the same people who are saying or your critics say, you know what, that's noise.
Brother.
You know I say all the time the graduates, let your haters be your waiters.
When you sit down at the table of success.
But let's get specific and talk about the migrant crisis. In this regard, about two hundred and twenty nine thousand migrants came to the city, the city streets of New York. You had to find shelter for them. You articulate, I believe during the Tucker cars and interview, of the lack
of support that you had received, et cetera. Nevertheless, you found a way to maneuver your way through this and find yourself in a position where there were so many other things about your administration there was to deploy it crystallize for the viewers out there and the listeners on iHeartRadio as well, the kind of potential damage inflicted upon New York City in light of migrants coming to the city and New York obviously being considered the.
Sanctuary, right and you know, well said, and that's a great question. So let's look at it for a moment.
Tunia, twenty thousand, microco and asybeum seekers came to the city one point five the size of Aubany, So a whole city was dropped in our cities.
We were getting thousands a week, all times of the night.
We had to provide every service that you would provide to an individual person. We had to do housing, we had to clean clothing, we had to provide food. We had to educate forty thousand women and forty thousand children. And we were told this, it's illegal for you to allow them to work. You can't allow the busses to come. You can't stop the buses from coming in. You can't even allow them to volunteer to remove graffiti, deliver food and services. You couldn't do any of that. All of
that was against the against against the law. And out of the six point five billion dollars, the federal government wanted to give US two hundred million and only gave about one hundred and twenty five a million to provide for this service, which is a national problem, it's not a local problem. And so what it did was, in addition to the countless number of people who were pursuing the American Dream, it brought in a lot of It brought in a small number of a criminal element that
did a disproportionate amount of crime. So we had a public safety issue that we were facing our city, and we had an infrastructure issue because those six point five billion dollars. People tell me all the time, Okay, Veric, you got through it. Wow, congratulations, you transitioned one hundred and seventy thousand to go on to the next step of the American Dream. But what is the damage? The
long term damage. I couldn't go after children who are chronically absent from school because we didn't have the money, my older adults dealing with my housing infrastructure. That's six point five billion now way up to seven six point nine billion, that were removed from dealing with the real issues that we wanted to invest into our into our city. The long term impact to New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Denver, we have not witnessed a long term impact yet to discrisis.
So with that being said, are you still still supportive of the City of New York being considered the sanctuary city, and.
So that's that's so important. These are good questions. Brother, people conflate what centuary city is.
Please explain.
A sanctuary city is.
Saying that if you are in New York and you are paying your taxes, then those tax dollars provide your services, your police services, your hospital service, your educational services. And so right here, if you in New York, we're not gonna deny you those services. Because you buy a loaf of bread paying taxes, you buy gas, you're paying taxes. So with those tax dollars, you're paying for the goods and services of the city. That's what the sanctuary city means.
What we have been saying, what American people have said it. Donald Trump got the popular vote and the electoric and so the people of the city said, we got to fix out borders. You can't allow people to come in the country with no destination, not knowing where they're going, and then you're telling.
Them you're not allowed to work. Imagine that for six But what about somebody that's looking at you. Because I got to be honest with.
You, mister mayor, Yes I have been on this show. I've been on the airwaves, and I mean, with all of these bills, billions you're talking about, I think I was the loudest critic of the fifty three million dollar prepaid credit ca I'm losing my mind. I'm like, wait a minute. I've been black all my life. I've been in New York City for the better part of my life. I'd be damn if I ever saw some damn prepaid credit cards coming to the black community, and I was
born here. I'm like, I'm looking at it, and I'm saying, how could that be?
Support it?
I love that, And that is why it's important to be able to tell your own narrative.
So let's look at those credit cards. Please, those cards.
We were required by law to feed every migrant and asylum secret that was in our care. They were being food was being delivered that people were not eating, and a lot of it was being thrown out.
We were wasting money.
And so my former deputy Mayor, Schener Wright, first deputy man, came in and said, listen, this is this minority company called Muchafi. We give people food card with eleven dollars around eleven dollars a day that they can spend for food, and they're going to go to the local bodega's shops and restaurants within the area.
So we're going to recycle the.
Money back into the community instead of a large conglomerate that we spend it. It saved us money and we were able to put money back to the local communities and it's stopped the food waste that we were.
Seeing of taxpayers dollars.
So we did a pilot to say, let's see how successful this is, and so on first brush, when you see people do it, you say, wait a minute, when you're giving these guys crowd out lost my.
Mind was fifty three million prepaid credit cards prepaid Oh I was hot. I was hot about that.
So even the editorial boys who responded at first, like the Daily News, here the whole piece and say, listen, this is a smart approach to government.
Because because what many people don't realize.
People know of my law enforcement background, they know what I'm doing around health in the in the city, but really people don't appreciate the fiscal management that independent bond raiders who determine how successful you are managing the city, have raised my bonds. They say, this cat has managed us through COVID, They've managed us through He's managed us through the sylum seekers. He's managing the city and been fiscally responsible.
I want to transition to the issue of crime, all right, because on May first, twenty twenty three, thirty thirty year old homeless man Jordan Neely was killed after being putting a choke hold by Daniel Penny, a twenty four year United States Marine Corps veteran, while riding the New York City subway. He was found not guilty this past December of woman was set on fire and she was sleeping on the f train. When you think about those incidents, is those kind of things that you happen, Like you said,
the number is considerably lower than people even recognized. But you know, the visual is what it's all about it, you know, I mean, you see a woman on fire ski you don't want your daughter on there. You don't want your wife on there, you don't want your mom on there. You're gonna get scared. You're gonna be a panic mode because you worried about what them it could
it be you? When you talk about addressing crime, how do you believe your administration is going about doing it and how has it been successful?
A crime is perceived.
And actual, and where I'll failure, I tell the team.
We lost the perception.
Because when you have incidents that overshadow your success, no matter how impressive your numbers are, it overshadows when you have three people's by a person with severe mental health, illness, we have someone set on fire.
Those visualizations are real, and I respect how people feel. Now.
I don't want to come to people and tell them listen, here my numbers, this is our well we're doing.
How you feel is important to me.
My success in this city has been overshadowed by three things.
Random acts of violence.
Slashing people, pushing people to the subway system, putting people on fire. Those small numbers have a major impact on how people feel.
Second is recidivism. We have a lot of cats that.
Were in out going, coming out, going, going unbelievable, getting arrested and coming right back out in the streets, sometimes the same.
Day, right right, right right.
We have five about five hundred and seventy five people that were arrested over seventy five hundred times for shoplifted. We have thirty six people who are arrested over eleven hundred times for in crime.
That's just asking police officers not to do their job. You know what one purpose is certain saying.
And let me tell you the third issue that overshadows severe mental health illness.
We have people with severe mental health illness.
When I first got elected, I went into the streets January and February and visited people in encampments. I saw human waste, drug path fernalia, schizophrenic, bipolar, and I told the team, we can't live like this. And many people were saying for years, even you know, when we were growing up, when people were sleeping on the street, our family said, listen, just leaving them alone.
They're crazy or what have you.
We closed psychiatric wars like Creepmore and others and didn't give people a landing place.
And now you see them on the streets.
They're doing these They part of the random acts of violence, a small number of them. And so when I said we're gonna tackle this, my team said, man, you out of your mind, and nobody dealt with this stuff. And I said, no, this is inhumane. We got to stop this. And when I was out on the street, I met a guy that was living in an encampment who was a retired police officer that just slipped through the cracks, And I said, we're not going to continue to do that.
That has overshadowed our success.
Crime is down, shooters, homicides are down, our economy is back, but it has been overshadowed by those random acts of.
Well, we gonna talk a little bit more because we're going to work to not have those things overshadowed with all the good things that you're doing right now. And I just want to throw this out, you know, and it'll please your team, because I man, everybody make sure I have my information. I have to give them their proper where it's do. Okay, you're talking about a plan to acts, you know, taxes for the working class family.
You're planning to literally eliminate and cut city personal income taxes to for five hundred and eighty two thousand of the poorest New Yorkers. Any time you cut taxes, I love that.
I love that.
I love stuff like that. You're planning to build eighty thousand new homes across five boroughs through small changes and bring the cost of housing down. You've got an initiative that has saved New Yorkers more than thirty billion through city, state, and federal program since the start of the administration. Major, major stuff going on, broken class speed have it. That's right.
Having said that, some would say that you still got a lot to worry about because former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is contemplating competing with you for the mayor see in New York City, and according to the recent polls, he's up about twenty three percentage points on you. What do you have to say about that?
Deja vu? Go back to February of twenty twenty one. There was another Andrew, Andrew Yang. He got in the race. He was measuring the drapes in City Hall.
I don't know why. He never had a chance to get you. I don't know had a chance to get you.
Poles had him up double digit. Some wrong with the post double digit, the post right, And what I told the team Poles don't elect people elect mayors people do. We need to say consistent, and that's what we did. And so I'm going to tell my story and I'm going to let people see exactly what we have accomplished, and we're looking forward to that.
I'm not gonna tell you what we're gonna talk about next. I'm gonna surprise you. I'm gonna take a little break, but I promise you where this discussion is going next is right in your wheelhouse, and you'll enjoy it immensely.
Mhm