Welcome back to the CEVN.
Smith Stoke here with his honor himself, the Mayor of New York City, Histeric Adams. I want to get into a subject and I want to be very very unapologetic and transparent about where I'm going black man a black man.
About the state of our two party system.
And what kind of impact you believe that has had on the black community, particularly in recent memory, even compared to a few years ago, to a decade ago, to before that.
Right, well, first of all, we should be after the election. It should be.
About building up our communities and our cities in our country. You know when people say, well, while you sitting down with Donald Trump, doctor King wanted to sit down with Nixon. You know, when you pulled into purchase something for your family, they don't ask if you're a Democrat or Republican. When a bullet car a highway of death in your community and it hits someone, it's not a Democrat or Republican. Obama said it right after the election. We must transform
into the United States. The election is an intramural There's no reason we're holding these grudges Every four year years we say who's the one up and I'm gonna take my ball and go home. No, I am very consistent on who I am and making sure that I'm willing to sit down and communicate with anyone.
And I'm an open book.
Brothers, I don't There's never a time even when you talk to my team, they never will say you can't touch that subject area. I'm an open book. I have an authentic life, and I think as black men, we need to look into who is understanding our issues in a gender.
Just recently, I spoke up on behalf of Snoop Dogg and Soldier Boy and Nelly as well, And the only reason I spoke up for them was on this level. People were going off about them performing at the Crypto Ball and it was supposed to be a part of the inauguration celebration and Donald Trump was supposed to be there, but he wasn't there. And I'm like, so what at the end of the day, you know what, you're making a little paper. Somebody's gonna ain't gonna pay you six
figures for one night's work. Everybody says, it's not just about the money. It's not just about the money. But I'm thinking along these lines, this is our problem. We have politicians alluding to him being a racist, comparing him the Nazis and stuff like that. Right, but then I'm supposed to expect you to go out and do business with this man and to legislate policy within this country.
And then I'm thinking about people in the media. I'm not gonna say any names about them right now, but they called them everything but the child of God, and then all of a sudden, they're going to Maro Lago to kiss the ring. And I'm like, you wouldn't have had to do that if you didn't go that fall and you just judge on the issue instead of personalizing and engaging in incendiary content. For some reason, we don't seem to get that message nearly enough, especially as a community.
Am I wrong in feeling now?
Right?
You are dead on, And that is why we have to find our own space and not allow people to identify our space. And we need to really look at and do something that's really revolutionary. We need to start reading, look at the real data, don't just look at the headline, don't just flip through the Instagram, the TikTok or the
quick Twitter post. Sit down and say, let me do some real research on the issues that are impacting us, because you can't have generation after generation of different administrations, but we're still going through the same hell. Why aren't we going through the same hell? Archbishop Desmond Tutu head a quote that lives with me. We spend a lifetime pulling people out of the river. No one goes upstream and prevent them from falling in in the first place.
Poverty is profitable. And then when you look at who we're pulling out of the river, they look like you and I. People are making paper off of the dysfunctionality of government, and there's no real desire to change stuff. There's no really you look across the country and see black and brown people who are reading that grade level. Look at the unemployment level, look at the incarceration level.
It's the same across the country. So either we born with some biological dysfunctionality, or there's a profit in making sure we don't change these issues.
I want to hold both sides accountable.
Yes, I want to look at both sides and say, you know what, it's been a bindary system for decades. Both you parties have been in charge of our government. And look at the regression that has taken place within our nation.
But then it took a step further.
Because when we get back to your point about how you never left the Democratic Party, you felt like the Democratic Party left you. I voted for Kamala Harris. I wasn't excited about it. I'll be the first to admit it. I just didn't like the divisiveness and the chaos that Trump had in his first administration, and I didn't want
to repeat of that in round two. So my thinking was, if you got a Democrat in the White House, but you got Republicans in the House and the Senate, somehow people would be forced to compromise and things could get done. And I look at it in the aftermath of it all, and I'm saying to myself, wait a minute, we saw a president that clearly, I'll say it. There was slippage. You knew that, but you put them. You're avoided the primaries.
You made sure he showed up on a debate stage on June twenty seventh.
He wasn't ready. It was too late for anybody else.
So Kamala Harris gets inserted in there. And on judgment Day, which was election day, the voter said, we didn't.
Fall for it. We didn't fall for it.
And the Democratic Party to me, is still chirping as if it's the campaign trail, not recognizing that this man is in office and you're going to have to deal with them. How could we expect anybody to deal with Donald Trump if as a Democrat, folks are still out there spewing the same old rhetoric.
In a way, we need to start talking about governing right now. And then you look at a mayor of the largest city in America that makes a determination I'm going to sit down and not war.
With the president, but work with the president.
And people are trying to figure out why I have a city to run with real issues around affordability and housing.
And we have been successful in spite of what we're going through. Brother.
In year one and year two, we broke records in individual years on how much housing we build. We brought record on how many broke records on how many people we moved from homelessness into permanent housing, of how many people using subsidized of vouchers for housing. We've been breaking records after records after records, and with the help of Washington d C, we can go even further What.
About people who say, mister Mayor, you're engaging in an exercise of futility because look at.
This man, he doesn't really care.
This is what I'm just told.
Their attitude is he doesn't really care. Look at him.
He immediately got rid of it, you know, trying to get rid of DEI programs.
Look at him.
Look at who he surrounded himself with, these black folks, these minorities that have supported him. How many does he actually have in his cabinet?
Look at him.
It's Elon Musk for X, it's Fred's Mark Zuckerberg for Facebook and Matter and.
All of this other stuff. It's TikTok now.
So he's insulated himself with media arms or information disseminating arms that can insulate him from the level of scrutiny. Mister Mayor, aren't you just wasting your time even trying to.
Communicate with First of First of all, I'm Elon Musk, got I love the technology.
I love what he's doing.
I think this cat is gonna put us on Mars before we know it, and all the secrets that are in our universe.
So I believe in what he's doing.
But think about it, we're saying, look at him, and what he's doing is surrounding himself with But then you get a straight up South Jamaica Queen's street cat that's able to sit down, that he's willing to pick up the phone and say, let's sit down and talk, and you want to demonize that action.
So we can't have it both ways.
You can't look at well, he surrounding himself with a lot of billionaires, and now you get this straight up blue collar mayor that he's saying, Eric, let's sit down and let's have a conversation, and you want to demonize that. Also, some people enjoy the emotions that's attached with misery, and no matter what they see brother, they going to say, woe is me. I could have said woe is me when I was arrested as a child, but I became
a cop. I could have said woe is me because I have a learning disability I learned about in college, but I pushed through and became the mayor of the City of New York. So you can easily sit back and look at your circumstances and say I will never do it, or you could use your circumstances to build your character.
And make it happen.
Do you believe Donald Trump is interested in helping New York City citizens?
Yes? I do.
The President loves New York. He made his prosperity here in this city. I believe he understands how important New York is for the country with an economic engine for the entire country. And I think that this is a great opportunity to look at some of the things that we need to do here in the city. And I'm going to continue to engage with him. I'm going to
try and this is not unique. Let's understand something. When President Biden won, I went to see him before being elected mayor, and I talked with him about the crime issues we were seeing in our city.
He was able to appoint in the eighteen and.
He loved talking to you until you're highlight at the migrant crisis and how it was the ability New York terms.
It took ten trips to Washington, d C. So it wasn't as though when he got elected. The same thing I'm doing with this president I did with President Biden. He came to the city to sit down with me in the police department to talk about the issue of the day, which was public safety.
So this is not new. You know.
I have sat down with gang leaders. I've sat down with people who are my staunch critic. If we don't communicate, how the hell are we going to ever hear the other side of issues.
I'm desperate. Does New York need the federal government's assistance?
Brother?
It's unbelievable what we need from the federal government. All that you see the billions of dollars we send back to the federal government, there's a lot we don't get back, and it's imperative.
Everything from our educational funding.
You look at many of the grants that allow us to do infrastructure building, when you look at of our law enforcement issues, of the laws that are coming out of Washington, we need.
The federal government.
If you don't have a real partner in the federal government, it is going to make it challenging for you to carry out the functionalities of running the city.
Like New York.
One of the things that Donald Trump is making a lot of noise about is the executive orders that he handed down, the inordinate amount of executive orders that he's handed down just this first couple of days in office.
Which one has stood out to you, The.
Most or all of them. We have to still study.
You know, people are questioning me on executive order or is it? And I say, damn it, the ink is not even dry.
Let me read it.
Because he can sign an executive order. But that don't mean it's gonna hold water. That doesn't mean you're not going to have to deal with the government in Congress, for example.
They got a lot of stuff to work through.
And some may come with lawsuits, some may come with challenges. But I think the spirit of what he's saying. And you know this, and I've been saying this over and over again, this is the greatest country on the globe. You know, all the country has dream attached to his name, but America, the American dream.
Doing the migrants and asylum seeker crisis.
I went to South America and watched people walk thousands of miles through the dairy and gap, putting their life on the line, all because they wanted to come here. And many and overwhelming number wanted to come to New York. And so when you look at how we have all of a sudden, all of a sudden, become ashamed of being the greatest country in the globe. Our children are being radicalized. I hate the country. Some of the Ivy League institutions are talking about, you know, the destruction of
America and just mantellent in America. As students, we no longer appreciate our product. And I think that out of everything he's doing to hear people chanting USA, USA, of this country is the greatest country on the globe.
Is it perfect? Hell? No, it's not.
But if you were to tell those who criticize this country, here's a map, pick where you want to go, a whole lot of people won't be going anywhere.
The one thing that one could argue in favor of the right and against the left is that the right has been preaching about how America's degree is country in the world. Yes, and they've accused the left of doing the exact opposite of that, which is the protest that you pointed to, along with various other things. Is there any legitimacy to that year, I.
Think it's extremely legitimate. We have a the are various systems of government. You have communism, you have socialism, you have capitalism. We never say that we were not a capitalist country. It's about compassionate capitalism. It's about coming here as a dishwasher and one day owning a chain of restaurants. It's about growing up in Hollis, Queens and now I'm becoming one of the premiere of.
Talk show hosts. Where else are you going to be able to accomplish that.
It's about being dyslexic and arrested, and now I'm elected to be the mayor of the greatest city on the globe. The possibilities are endless in this country.
Sitting next to somebody that was I had undiagnosed dyslexia that they found out about and ultimately, you know, this is the kind of stuff I'm sitting here today. I ask you this because when I think about diversity, equity, and inclusion, that has nothing to do with we were just talking about getting back to d I would like you to define a definition of DEI.
What it should mean when you hear de EI.
What should that mean to the average American citizen and the employers out here.
Yeah, we cannot We cannot ignore the fact that there are many people who were passed over based on their ethnicity, and based on their gender, and based on their lives. You know, many of you I would talk to some of my Muslim brothers and sisters, and they would denyed jobs because they had the job. I would talk to some of my Jewish brothers and sisters, and they were law firms and other jobs they could not have.
And African Americans.
I can think about my sister, my oldest sister, how many jobs she would train someone who was junior to her and constantly watch them pass over.
So we know there were some historical problems.
Now the goal is how do you give opportunities to people, regardless of the ethnicity, their gender, their lifestyle. That's what I believe. It should be qualified people getting the given opportunity.
And that's one of the problems that people have when they look at the Trump administration or they look at the Republicans and the Conservatives, because every time you hear DEI, whether it's in the media on the right or from politicians, when you hear DEI, it implicates or insinuates these are
unqualified individuals that got jobs because of DEI. They're not looking at the fact that DEI was necessary because there were plenty of qualified individuals who didn't look like you share your cultural identity or background that.
You didn't give a chance to show you what they could do without it.
They're not doing that, and that's something that the Right to Me needs to get their act together about.
When they talk about DEEI to that, you say, well, listen, well said.
And I speak with folks of color who are very.
Much associated with the party, and they said, listen, there's areas we have to improve upon.
There's a lot of things.
That I could disagree with people on, but I want to find places on where I agree on. And the only way you could get it at the table and talk about allowing that pathway to success is you have to be at the table if and talk to people and not yell at people.
And that's what folks are.
If we're constantly yelling at each other, we would never hear each other. And that is my role as the mayor of the most important city on the globe.
Before I let you get on out of here, there just a couple of questions.
I know this man, I really appreciated September fifteenth, twenty twenty three, you awarded media moguls showing Diddy Combs with the key to the city and.
The cleared the day Diddy Day.
Rest of all, I want to know I'm curious what goes into determining who gets the key to the city.
I just want to know what I'm saying.
Asked, you know what's interesting, I'm glad you said that took about DEI. When we did an analysis of who were getting the keys, it didn't look like us, it didn't look like hose.
To somebody that.
Looked like us, And what the hell has you got himself? So man, come on, man, come on, but go ahead, go ahead.
You can't live life by what's in the front. You gotta know, you know, you go based on what people have done. And so there's a whole paneling committee and what we did we broke it up into entertainers as well as those who contribute to the city, and people looked at his contribution of what what he has done and others that we on it. We knew that we should give him that award. And listen, my heart goes out to him, you know, as he.
Goes through his legal struggles.
You know, my heart goes out right exactly, you know, and I you know, there by the grace of God goes out. We're all going through something. And so Mahart goes out to him.
The key was returned last year.
Did you ask for the team the committee? Did the committee? You know, I'm not the individual person determined.
There's a whole committee that sits down and they made the determination because of the highlight of the case, and this team was They were cool. They said, well, listen, we understand what's going on. We respect that. They didn't give any pushback. This is the big boys, big girls club. We all know that you have to uh deal with the issues that are in front of in front of.
The Only reason not asked is because you know, when when Luigi Mangioni, you know, allegedly killed the United Healthcare CEO Ryan Thompson, you were right there when he.
Arrived in New York. I'm asking because.
You were right there.
You know you will be sive, front and center when it comes to issues such as that, no doubt.
Listen. I'm on the ground, man.
I was on the ground when Officer Moron Rivera two young officers was shot and killed, assassinated. I was on the ground when eleven year old eleven month old baby was shot in the head. I was in the hospital with the family members. I believe that being mayor is both substantive and his symbolism. Uh, and we have done a great job and a substantive part of it. But the symbolism of a person who's allegedly committed an assassination and our city with a silencer watching him come back in the city.
I needed to look him in the eye.
And many New Yorkers said thank you for being there because people were traumatized. And if I lose my CEOs in the city, I'm losing employees, I'm losing tax dollars, and I'm using the economic stability of the city.
So you sound like a conservative. You understand that some people don't look at you say you sound like a conservative.
No, but think about us for a moment. You know, you know, I went to the Church of Christ in South Jamaica. Queens our philosophy in the family we grew up in. You know, I'm not sure what your dad did, but I'm sure.
It was silver hard blue Calker brother, mother, register, nurse, Queen General Hospital.
Think about it.
Think about the core values and principles that they're from. You know, your family, I believe it's the Caribbean come in here. May have left family members behind, aching out their way, not ever looking for a handout, just giving the opportunity to work, you know, for their families, and their families just six six children that they were raising.
And so those are the principles that I live by.
What about people who look at the level say they want to give too many handouts? They look at the right and say they don't want to give you a damn thing.
Which way do you go? How does the mayor of the largest city in the United States answer that quest?
I love that.
I love that because what happens all the time people want you to be on one side or the other, and it takes a lot of discipline to say, you're not going to pigeonhole me.
I may be have a I may have a conservative view on the.
Topic, and I may have a liberal view on the topic, and I'm going to address that based on where I am on the topic.
But devoid of being pigeonholed, devoid of you know, taking a side per se, because I'm right with you. I believe exactly how you do. I'm not a politician, though. They say you need that support. In order in order to get support, you need to take a side.
How do you answer that?
And I think they're wrong.
I think the numerical minority are at the streams. The overwhelming majority is in the middle. We have to encourage them to come out and vote. I think they are more Americans like you and I that are concerned about affordability, public safety, and making sure they could house their children and have a safe place families in this city.
But we've allowed the extremes to hijack the narrative.
But I think the overwhelming number of New Yorkers are just like you and I want to provide for our family and make sure they have a future.
Last couple of questions when I think about you, now, let's think positive.
Yes, Let's say.
These allegations are gonna go away.
Your issues campaign, you know, fraud and campaign finance, all of this stuff, we're gonna throw away.
With all of that.
It's you against Andrew Cuomo for the mayor of New York. I'm a sports guy, like competician. I mean, what kind of prediction would you put forth if you got if you had yourself, if you found yourself in a position where you were going up against Andrew Cuomo for the mayor, for the mayor's position, for the his honors position in the city of New York.
Well, listen, I think that to me, and this is how I run my life. I'm not running against Andrew Cuomo or any of the other candidates. I'm running against myself play my best game. If I play my best game, it doesn't matter who's in the race, because there's other candidates in the race. And what I've learned in electoral politics right now, we're in the preseason. You know, we're not in the playoffs. When you're in the playoffs, your
game has to be different. You could be great, you know, in the season, but when you get in the playoffs, let's see what you're made of.
He's a former governor that may be running for mayor.
Yes, you're a mayor. All of this stuff goes away. Gubernatorial aspirations, No.
Not, not of this?
Why not?
I am focused on running this city and listen, of this is the second second most important job in America, And you know, it's a blessing every day being mayor of the City of New York. And so no matter what's on the next journey, no one can take away the number one tenth. I was one hundred and tenth mayor of the greatest city on the globe.
Think about that for a moment.
You said second most important job was the first president of the United States.
You know, but everyone knows.
When I meet the mayor's from across the globe during you n week, they all argue about who's number two and number three and then look over at me and their smile they say, we know who's number one.
Good.
YEA last question, sir, as we sit here talking right now as two individuals from the streets of Queens, New York, and we hear the climate that is out there. It's subsided to some degree, although there's obvious concerns because the election is over and the people have spoken. Donald Trump won the popular vote, he won the electoral college vote, the right one won the House, they got the Senate.
It is what it is is what message would you say.
Particularly specifically to Black Americans out there who have this fear of what he's going to do and the kind of effect that's going to have on our community moving forward. And it's not to alienate any other minority. It's not to alienate White America. It's nothing about that, right, and a black man from Quez, you're a black man from Queis we're hearing the rhetoric and we see people overreacting to the slightest syllable that comes out of his mouth,
and that of the right. If anybody from our community supports it in any way, what message do you have?
Yeah, and I like that, And I think your success has been because you may be of African ancestry, of you speak to everyone. The guy that's sitting inside the bar that's Italian still can connect with you.
The heartbroken person who may be.
A janitor can see how you combine sports and politics.
You know.
I think that is the gift that you have have of that you're able to connect with people. And so I say that African Americans who feel specifically that this is going to impact their lives.
No matter who's the mayor, the governor, the president.
If you truly believe God is in charge, then God is not gonna let anything harmful happen to you. And so we have to draw on our religious beliefs and we have to really fortify how we feel about the success of the children and families of our city. Stay focused, don't be distracted. You have your dreams, you have your mission, and no president or mayor governor.
Is going to be able to impact that because.
You and I both know we've lived through several mayors and governors, and many times they may have been elected, and people have forecasts doomsday and we're still here today.
You're running the show, I'm running the city.
There you go, and we got resolved.
It was all minds, a pleasure, resolute us, the Mayor of New York himself, the one and the only Eric Adams. I hope you all enjoyed that conversation. I know I did, and if you listened, no doubt you learned a few things.