In a lively interview on Hot 97’s “Ebro in the Morning,” New York City Mayor Eric Adams discussed his return to the show after a three-year absence, directly confronting the challenges of his reelection campaign and public trust. Mayor Adams addressed the recently dismissed federal charges, asserting they were “lawfare” targeting him after he spoke out about the $7.7 billion cost of the migrant crisis. He also defended his administration’s handling of the influx of migrants and asylum seekers, emphasizing New York City’s compassionate approach and significant financial commitment to supporting them, contrasting it with other cities and states. Furthermore, Adams highlighted his administration’s achievements, including record-breaking numbers in M/WBE (Minority and Women-Owned Business Enterprises) contracts totaling $19 billion, affordable housing initiatives, and low crime rates, while acknowledging public perception challenges and his “confidence” stemming from his personal journey and the historical significance of being the city’s second Black mayor.
Transcript: Mayor Adams Appears on Hot 97’s “Ebro in the Morning”
Ebro Darden: Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all sizes and ages, they don’t say sizes anymore.
Laura Stylez: No. You can’t say that.
Darden: Because that’s like body shaming now. You can’t say sizes and ages. You can’t say sizes.
Stylez: You can say ages though.
Mayor Eric Adams: A lot of stuff is politically correct nowadays, you know.
Darden: Now you can’t say sizes no more, man. You gotta, you know, we don’t point out people’s sizes, man. All right, boys
and girls, let’s get to it. Ebro and Laura have welcomed back to the program after a three-year hiatus. Mayor Adams is back on the show.
Stylez: Good morning, mayor.
Mayor Adams: Good morning. Good morning. It’s great to be back on the show, you know. Listen. I’m out of purgatory.
Darden: Listen, we were reaching out. You were dodging us. I don’t think you wanted to get into it with me.
Mayor Adams: Brother, nothing I enjoy more than sparring with you, man. There’s no place I don’t go. You know that. Come on. That’s not good.
Darden: Listen, all I know is the facts, man. We were reaching out, and your team wasn’t having you come on. But now you are in motion to get or to keep your mayoral job. And so now you’re back on the program. We appreciate you joining us. Let’s get right into it. The news says Mamdani is the front runner. That’s what the polls are saying. What do you say to that?
Mayor Adams: And I like how you laid that out, because that’s important. If we go back a few months , what were those same polls saying? They were stating that Andrew Cuomo was up by 36 points. And even the day before the election, he was up by 10 points. And we know what happened. He lost by [12]points. And so the issue that I see is that this is all about new voters.
This is about those voters who are traditionally not called when you are polling. That’s why people keep missing the mark. We just got to stay focused and do what we normally do. And if you go back, Ebro, when I ran in 2021, remember what happened? I was 13 points behind Andrew Yang. 13 points. Andrew Yang was beating me 2 to 1 around Black men. I knew what we had to do. He was doing UBI, Universal Basic Income.
Mayor Adams: Right. And so it’s about the work, and it’s about getting out there. I was out in Harlem with a group of brothers, I think they called it Heaven [up] in Harlem. And you had about 3,000 brothers and sisters out there, and I was excited about that energy. This is what I do, get on the ground.
Darden: So now speaking of you up in Harlem, is that where we saw you doing pull-ups? Or chin-ups?
Mayor Adams: No, that was in Canarsie.
Darden: Because now, listen, man, they give out tickets for people doing, working out on city lights and stoplights and all that. You can’t, come on, man. It’s a double standard, man. You out here doing chin-ups, and then we got to talk about these chin-ups, man. Those weren’t even pull-ups. It was chin-ups. What’s going on? We got to get you back in the gym.
Mayor Adams: Yeah, listen, without a doubt, man. And I do it every morning, I’m out back in the gym at 64. This body is still exercising daily, staying in shape.
Darden: There you go. Now, how do you think you’re going to regain the trust of the New York City voter? Listen, you know, we’re not going to mince words here. The federal government brought charges against you, and everyone, including myself, saw Donald Trump give you a pass. And so then the case goes away.
People don’t trust why it went away. People have lost trust in your handling of that information and the information we got, the straw donors. You know, a lot was made over the flights and all of that, but I think the more egregious accusation was the fact that they said that there was money, city money, the matching, the eight times matching money that went to your campaign. How are you going to gain people’s trust?
Mayor Adams: And you got to speak directly to people, but let’s peel that apart for a moment, because many people didn’t read the indictment. I’m happy that you seem to have read layers of it, but a lot of people just went through the headline. So what was I charged with, and when did I get charged? I got charged when I talked about the 237,000 migrants and asylum seekers that came to the city without any financial support. And it cost us, Ebro, it cost us $7 billion, $7.7 billion to be exact.
And after 10 trips to Washington, after two meetings with the president, it was clear that they were ignoring what was happening to the city. And I had a good relationship with Biden prior to the migrants and asylum seekers. So when I started to talk about that, I was targeted, and it was clear lawfare. You saw what happened. I was charged with calling the Fire Department and asking them to do a building inspection, not to pass anybody, just go do your job and do a building inspection.
And after that, they connected with leg room upgrades for flights I paid for, but just asked for additional leg room. They were charging me with bribery and facing 33 years in prison over it. And so let’s look at the volunteer who allegedly did something wrong. Not a staffer, a volunteer– I did six, around 500 or so fundraisers. I don’t know the exact number, but it was a couple of hundred fundraisers.
I had over six, 700 volunteers. It appears that one of those volunteers did something inappropriate. Everyone would tell you in these campaigns that people do these straw donors’ dumbness. And I clearly told people all the time, you’ve got to follow the rules. There’s not one shred of evidence that said I told someone to do something inappropriate.
And you know from the streets, brother, people get their [] in trouble. They started lying on people to save themselves. I never broke any laws, never broke any rules. And if we want to say that Donald Trump did something for me, I did not know President Trump. I met President Trump when he ran, when he ran for office at the Alfred E. Smith’s dinner was the first time we met.
He was on the campaign trail saying, look what they’re doing to that mayor. That is wrong what they’re doing to that mayor. He knew what he went through in lawfare and President Biden– President Biden said his Justice Department was politicized when he pardoned his son. President Biden said that. But you know what?
We don’t even have to go back to the history of the federal government on Black and brown leadership. Let’s just look at Brian Benjamin. The same office took Brian Benjamin, the highest ranking Black in the state. He gave, he contributed discretionary dollars to a nonprofit in Harlem and they indicted him because they said he did it because of campaign dollars. The judge dismissed the case, destroying Brian Benjamin’s life.
Darden: And are you talking about precedent at this, at this point? Cause you know, I mean we can, there’s plenty of corruption and things that have taken place in law systems and politics, but the summary of your charges, there was bribery, there was conspiracy, there was wire fraud and there was soliciting campaign contributions.
You’re saying the straw donors, there was no evidence for the straw donors and you feel like that, that’s why that got dropped. But I think the quid pro quo was what a lot of the public was talking about because Donald Trump and his border czar, Homan wanted access to the city and the sanctuary city.
And people felt like you sat on that couch at FOX News when Tom Homan put his hand on your thigh and y’all was giggling and laughing. They felt like you did a quid pro quo to get out of the situation. You [inaudible] nice and smooth so that now they can put pressure on the city like they are running up on basketball games and ICE is running through the city. They feel like you cut that deal. So I’m asking you again, how do you get the public’s trust back?
Mayor Adams: Well, we gotta go, we gotta go back to that brother cause the way you get it is you got to tell the accuracy of the story and exactly what happened. You said there was a quid pro quo, I had to, I had to raise my hand in federal court and the question was asked by the federal judge under the threat of perjury. Was there anything offered to me or did I offer anything to the administration, the Justice Department?
And the answer was no, clearly. Look at what I was saying about the migrants and asylum seekers and particularly those dangerous gangs. What I was saying pre-election and what I said post-election, it’s the same thing. Before I knew who the president was, I was saying the same thing. Dangerous gangs cannot remain in our city committing some of the crimes that they did. Now let’s look at where we are right now because the charges are dismissed and it can’t come back.
I took the White House to court for migrant and other related issues more than any mayor in the country. So if people say that, “Eric, you’re beholden to the White House.” I took the White House to court more than any mayor in the entire United States. But when I needed the White House, such as the wind farm project in Sunset Park, a multi billion dollar project that they put a stop work order on, I flew to Washington and explained to the president [how] important it was.
And they lifted that stop work order and I got those 1,500 union jobs. So no, there was never a quid pro quo. That was the narrative that was put out there that people wanted to continue to politicize not only the Justice Department, but politicize what I’ve done in the city. We turned the city around, Ebro. People don’t want to deal with that, but we turned the city around.
Darden: I’m glad you brought that up, Laura, and a lot of people have grown to not like you after knowing you in this city for a long time because of a lot of the things we just discussed. And when you become, I don’t know any mayor of New York City that can make everybody happy. It doesn’t exist. It never existed. It’s never happened. And I don’t know if it’s possible.
But I have been on the air and I have said that there are things, policies and things that you have done that have been great for the city. There have been some things. I think one of the things that has worked against you is, and I think me and you, we talked about this, you have an arrogance and an ego about you. And I think that has worked against you in this job, right?
Because you are somebody who comes from policing. You still have the posturing of a police officer, and sometimes that can be off-putting in a job like this, right? It can be very condescending and dismissive in many ways. But I have talked about the fact that while that might be the tone, there have been things that I’ve heard you’ve done, that I heard that you have done for people in this city that have worked out well.
But once again, I think the narrative against you [is] gaining people’s trust, the narrative, the mistakes that you have made, right? I think those are the areas where you’re going to, in this race, have to get people to turn around. And that’s the uphill battle that you have.
Mayor Adams: Without a doubt, brother. So let’s go back to, because those are very important points you’ve raised, let’s go back to my posture. Brother, people talk about me being mayor, borough president, first Black borough president, state senator, first Black to chair Racing and Gaming in the state, captain of the Police Department. Look at all of that. Brother, that’s my glory, man. That’s not my story.
My story is worth walking into a third grade classroom and seeing on the back of the chair “dumb student” because of my undiagnosed dyslexia. I was mocked throughout my elementary school. People would mimic how I read because I fumbled over words. My story is about living on the verge of homelessness.
You know, mommy gave us a garbage bag full of clothing, brother, to take to school every day because she thought the marshal was going to throw us out. It’s being arrested and beaten by police officers, but having to get up that [] floor and then go into that same Police Department and start 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care.
You better have confidence when you are dealing with being a Black man at this level. I’m the second Black mayor in the history of this city who many people don’t believe are supposed to be here. What we’ve done on M/WBE’s, I brought a Black and brown leadership into City Hall so that we can govern during difficult times. I cycled us out of COVID. I cycled us out of the migrant asylum seekers. I cycled us out of public safety. We built the housing that we were missing, $19 billion in M/WBE’s. If you don’t have a level of confidence in this thing, you’re done.
Darden: M/WBE’s– for the audience who may not know what that is, don’t use that language, is Minority and Black Women [Enterprise], right?
Mayor Adams: Exactly. And no one in the country has done that. No one in the country has reached those numbers of women and minority owned businesses, those small businesses. We broke records in housing, as you indicated, and I’m glad you talked about many of the successes that we’ve had. We broke records in affordable housing. We paying off college tuition for foster care children so they don’t slip through the cracks.
No low income New Yorker in the city now pays income tax because of what we’ve done, dropped the cost of child care from $220 a month to less than $20 a month. When you start racking up the W’s we have, no one has done the stuff that we’ve done for working class people like we have in the city.
And so, yes, people say, well, you know, you come up with too much confidence. I better have that confidence, man, [they’ll] eat me alive in this city if I didn’t have the confidence to walk into that classroom embarrassed, humiliated and still move forward and excel, I wouldn’t be where I am right now. You don’t become the second Black mayor in this city, the greatest city and the most important city in America if you didn’t have a level of confidence.
Stylez: Mayor Adams, let’s go back to ICE, right, with over three million immigrant families living in New York City. That’s what New York City is, right? We’ve seen some of the most brutal attacks from ICE with everyday people. And I’m not talking about the criminals because I think we can all agree, yes, if somebody is a criminal, they should be in jail.
They should be arrested. I’m talking about the families that are going to court appointments, doing it, “the right way” and being arrested, being basically kidnapped by ICE. And it’s happening here in New York City. As the mayor of New York City, a lot of people are like, how could you allow this to happen? So I’ll throw it over to you. What is your message to the immigrant community who is suffering and seeing all of this happen?
Mayor Adams: Well, first of all, sister, you’re right. This is a city of immigrants on many levels, on many levels. We have been very clear to our immigrant community. [237,000] migrants and asylum seekers came here to join even more undocumented people who were here in the first place. We told them, go to school, go to the hospital if you need medical care, call the police if you need assistance, all those things that they should do. And we’ve done it well.
Immigration enforcement is a federal issue, a federal issue. So when we witnessed the violation of the rights of those, like you just indicated, that went to court, many of them went to court because we put them through the process, 112,000 we put through the process with our free legal services to allow them to get to the step to go to court. That’s the work that we’ve done.
Once they do something in court that is inappropriate, we took the administration and did amicus briefs to say this is wrong. This should not be happening to people when they go inside to court. And we raised our voice on that. That is the extent of my authority when it comes down to the enforcement of immigration rules.
We do not coordinate with ICE and civil enforcement. That is against the law. We do not coordinate with them. We coordinate when it goes after dangerous gangs like the ones we took down, 27 gang members forcing migrant women into prostitution, holding their documentations, threatening them, selling guns. That’s who we focus on. There’s no record of us focusing on any civil enforcement. And when we see the violation of it, we have gone to court, which is within my powers and authority to do so.
Darden: But just for clarity, to Laura’s question, you’re saying the extent of what you can do to fend off ICE, apprehending people in the courthouse when they’re trying to do things the right way, is through a lawsuit. That’s the extent of what you and your administration can do to protect people in the city.
Mayor Adams: And use our bully pulpit as we have been using. If we prevent, if the police or any city employee interferes with ICE taking an action physically, they are now charged with obstruction. And obstruction is not the obstruction you’re talking about in the police. It’s federal obstruction. That’s a serious charge, and the city can assist that employee in court. But if that employee is convicted, that’s the end of the line. They’re facing a five-year federal prison sentence if they are found guilty of obstruction.
Darden: Now, Kristi Noem, just yesterday, is blaming you, sanctuary city laws, you know, they’re claiming they’re going to, you know, fully, I guess, I don’t know, run through uptown Washington Heights because of what happened with the plainclothes shooting and shootout yesterday with a criminal, the day before yesterday, whatever it was, with the criminal and this border patrol officer getting shot in the face. And now the narrative is blaming New York City’s mayor. What do you have to say?
Mayor Adams: I’m so glad you said that, brother, because as you said earlier in the conversation, you know, you can’t please everyone in the city being the mayor. So on one side of the end, I got one group saying Eric is not doing enough for the immigrants and migrants. And on another side, I got that Eric is blocking us from doing anything for the migrants and the immigrants.
So the question is, you got to do what’s best in your heart. Let me tell you this. I will always tell documented and undocumented people, you pay taxes when you go in, buy that loaf of bread, you pay taxes. Those taxes allow you to have the goods and services that come with the city, schools, hospitals, police service, all the other services. And I’m going to continue to tell my immigrant brothers and sisters, documented and undocumented, that they have a right to do so.
And so when you see both sides, the left and the right, are saying the problem of immigration is Eric Adams’ problem, the mayor’s problem, or Mayor Johnson in Chicago, or Mayor Bass in Los Angeles. This has dropped in the cities, where the cities have no authorization around the immigration federal policies.
We’re giving the pass to our federal electeds because we’re looking at the mayors, and all of these mayors are carrying the weight of this, instead of asking, what are the federal authorities doing? That’s not our job. Our job is, we don’t stop people from coming across the border.
We take care of people when they’re in their cities. And you know, sister, let me tell you something, when national immigration leaders, I invited them to New York to see what I was doing, they said, Eric, we’re not coming there, you’re anti-immigrant. And I said, well, why don’t you just come and walk through and see what we’re doing?
Eight national immigration leaders came to New York and spent the day here, saw what we were doing for free legal services, educating 50,000 students, paying for housing, food, clothing. They spent the whole day with us and had dinner with me at Gracie Mansion after spending the day. You know what they said? They said, man, we need to apologize to you. No one in the country is doing what you’re doing. And we’re going back to our cities, and we’re writing a letter to the federal government and say, they need to follow Mayor Adams’ motto, or what Mayor Adams have treated people with dignity and respect.
I met the first bus that came in here with children. I slept in a shelter with the migrants and asylum seekers to show them that we treat you with dignity in this city. When everyone else was pushing away people, we embraced them and we treated them with dignity. And that one child or family slept on the streets of the City of New York because of what we’ve done. And 90 percent have gone on to the next step of their journey.
Darden: And what you’re referring to when you talk about the control of influx of individuals in and out of states and in and out of the country is Republican governors putting, specifically down in Texas, putting migrants on buses and sending them, lying to them about where they’re going, first and foremost, and sending them to cities like New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, et cetera, without a plan. And the federal government not stepping in and dealing with that directly, am I correct? That’s what you’re referring to.
Mayor Adams: 100 percent. 100 percent. Ebro, we were getting 4,000 migrants and asylum seekers a week, 8,000 every two weeks. And at one point, you do the math, we had to feed, house, and clothe. And we did it. We did it. That’s what’s really being missed here. We did it like no other others. I went down to El Paso, Texas on the border.
I saw people sleeping in on the streets, in front of churches, inside airports. We didn’t do that here. We had a real intake system where we made sure children were educated in school. We made sure that we fed, housed, and clothed. We treated people with the dignity they deserved. And the narrative had been turned upside down, that this administration was anti-immigrant, when there’s no history of that, not only with the migrants and asylum seeker crisis, but throughout my entire life.
I’ve been embraced by the immigrant community in this city like no other administration has been embraced. You go throughout the city, from the Chinese, to the Caribbean, to the Haitian, to the Russian-speaking. What we have done to bring in everyone under this big tent is unprecedented, not only in a symbolic way, but also in a substantive way.
Darden: You’re running as an Independent. What do you say, you know, you had a point in your time where you weren’t a political person at this time, but they say you were a Republican at a certain point, you ran as a Democrat, now you’re running as an Independent. And Cuomo’s also running as an Independent. Is this because you have zero support from the Democratic Party? Tell us why the whole decision to run as an Independent, for those that don’t understand.
Mayor Adams: Well, thanks, that’s a good question. I’m still a Democrat. We need to be clear. I’m clear, I’m still a Democrat. The rules allow you to run on your own line and retain your still, your Democratic status. Like Mamdani’s going to run on the Working Families Party line. He’s a Democratic Socialist party affiliation. Cuomo is running on an Independent line. So we’re still, we’re still Democrats. You don’t lose your Democratic [affiliation]. And even Curtis Sliwa is running on an Independent line as well as the Republican line. I think he’s running on a pet friendly line, something like that.
So we filed our petition, 25,000 signatures, because that’s how you get the right to run on a line by filing petitions. We filed our petition. Judge Ho did not put in the dismissal of indictment until the day before we were supposed to turn those petitions in. And although his independent experts said that the case should be dismissed, he held on to it.
It didn’t give us the appropriate amount of time to really campaign like we wanted to. So now this gave us the runway to do exactly what you asked me the first question. I now have the ability to go out and use the campaign dollars that I’ve raised to tell my story. Our story has yet to have been told of what we have done to turn around this city. Now I get to do mailings, through social media, through television ads, through all of those other ways that I did when I ran the first time. I can tell my story of a working class person that became a working class mayor.
Darden: Mayor Adams, while we have you, I think we still have you for a few minutes, I want to go back to you dodging our program, because I didn’t want to spend too much time on that in the beginning. Tell us the truth, man. Why you wasn’t coming on our show?
Mayor Adams: Brother, you know one thing from me, I say it over and over again and I laugh about it. Why you wasn’t coming up here, Mayor Adams? I never run, never will, brother. I enjoy it.
Darden: Listen, you was going up to see Flex. You know Flex don’t talk politics. Come on, man. You were supposed to come see me. We were supposed to sit down. We were supposed to be having this conversation the whole time.
Mayor Adams: Ebro, one of the most enjoyable moments I had when I was borough president was politically sparring with you. It’s like Muhammad Ali and Walt Frazier. You bring out the best in me, I’ll bring out the best in you. Who are we kidding, man? We enjoy sparring, talking about these important conversations, because they’re complicated.
Darden: No it is, it’s hard.
Mayor Adams: What I enjoyed, when I was either in the studio or talking with you is that you knew the depth of these conversations and we were able to politically spar. We’re not going to agree on everything, but one thing’s for sure-
Darden: Well, we’re not supposed to. That’s not even, yo, in real talk, we’re not supposed to.
Mayor Adams: Without a doubt.
Darden: We’re not supposed to agree on everything.
Mayor Adams: Because I don’t agree with myself all the time. Like you said, man, I dropped some balls, man. I made some mistakes. You don’t get to 64 years old without trusting people you should not have trust, without people breaking your heart. That’s life. But you know what? I got up every day, man. I got up and I delivered for the city and people didn’t think that dyslexic, bald-headed guy could run a city this complex, but we did.
More businesses are in this city, in the city’s history. Crime, homicides, and shootings are at the lowest in this last six months in recorded history of the city. We broke housing records. What we’re doing for children with dyslexia, screening them early so they don’t end up in jail.
I’ve been on Rikers Island more than any mayor in the history of this city speaking to inmates. I got re-baptized with inmates sat down next to them and said, listen, man, I’m one of you. You know, this is the legacy of this administration. An ordinary guy, nothing prestigious about me, and you know what? I wanted to stand up and represent Black and brown men with a level of strength and show that we can lead. And I did it.
First Black, first deputy mayor in the history of the city, first Trinidadian deputy mayor, first Filipino deputy mayor, first East Indian deputy mayor, first Panamanian to be a chief advisor, first woman of color to be a police commissioner, first Spanish-speaking police commissioner. You know, first Korean to go into small business services. I diversified this city and we were successful. So when you remove the noise and go pound for pound and use all the analytics to determine the success of an administration, we knock it out the park. And that’s why bond raters—
Darden: So let me ask you this. Let me ask you this. I don’t recall you being anti-de Blasio. I don’t recall. I don’t really think it was a contention. If I recall correctly. I don’t really recall, but you know, I’m gonna leave that up to the internet. I’m sure they’ll find whatever they’re going to find.
But looking at what de Blasio went through, the narratives, et cetera, et cetera, prior to you having the job, now you’ve had a run at the job. What can you share for us as the voting public about this job? Because like, I look at de Blasio, people had negative that he couldn’t make everybody happy either. You know what I mean?
And everybody had something to say, what was wrong? What was this? What was that? What was that? And I look back and I go, all right, but how was that any worse than what’s going on with Mayor Adams right now? Right. So like when you look at his time as mayor and now your time at mayor, what have you done better? And what mistakes have you made that you thought you could actually get something done and you failed at?
Mayor Adams: Well, we got a lot done and, you know, I encourage people to go online and look at what we call our win list. You know, it’s just unbelievable when you think about what we did, cycling out of COVID, cycling out of the asylum seeker crisis, cycling out of criminal justice, getting people back on the subway, et cetera. So we got a lot done.
But I think your question is a good one, because the difference from what I see in this administration and the previous administration, because de Blasio had some real challenges with COVID. I mean, we had to shut down the city. What you know as a mayor, that you always want to come under criticism from the media. That’s the nature of the beast.
But at the same time, they normally report on the good wins you have. You go look back from day one until now, three years, seven months later and say, well, let me do an analysis. Have they reported any of the good stuff that the mayor has done? No, no. I bump into people all the time. I go to these town halls and I share what we have done. When I sit down to have dinner with my son and we talk, he always say, Dad, I didn’t know that. People don’t know our story. People don’t know what we’ve done for people.
Darden: But see, that’s your team’s fault. You could have been coming up here the whole time. When de Blasio was mayor. No, I’m being dead []. When de Blasio was mayor, we knew that the Post was going to say what the Post was going to say. Wall Street Journal is going to do what they’re going to do. They all in cahoots on that side. You got the Daily News is going to do what they’re going to do. And then somewhere in the middle. So us being on this box every day for New York City and a local focused show.
The reason we reach out is because we want to be able to tell the real stories and how it affects people’s everyday lives, the things they should actually be looking for, not the narrative shaping, right, because the police union is going to do some narrative shaping and this union is going to spend money in the newspaper to do some narrative shaping. And the real the big real estate is going to be spending their marketing dollars to shape narratives. And everybody’s got there because they want to be able to stay in control of the way the money moves and the power moves in the city.
But regular everyday people don’t have that luxury, man. Just tell us, man, what are the opportunities for us to make a few more dollars? What are the improvements in the investments that the city’s making in my everyday life? And that’s why we was always reaching out. But I understand it was running around doing conservative programs, trying to bring them people to the table. And you was out here, you know, playing, doing these games. And it meant you was dodging this because you thought you was going to get that smoke.
But the real reason was we wanted you up here so that you could talk about the actual policies and things that were affecting everyday New Yorkers. And that was a mess. I’m telling you right now that was a mess.
Mayor Adams: And I want to be real clear with you because you alluded to it several times and I want to be clear. At no time has it ever been presented to me by the team that, hey, Ebro wants you to talk. I always enjoy talking, speaking with you always. You know, it’s a good exercise for me– at no time. And if ever I knew and I’m going to speak with the team because you’re telling you were reaching out, that has never come to my ear. Now, a lot of stuff has been going on. Trust me, brother.
Darden: Yeah, y’all been busy. Feds are snatching phones, people resigning. Y’all had a lot. But it was running down on you, mayor. Mayor, it was running down on you.
Mayor Adams: Yeah, it was almost like the 86 Mets, brother. It was like the 86 Mets. I think it was 86. You know, Gooden was doing his stuff. Darryl Strawberry was doing his stuff. But you know what? They won the ring. And so, yes, we had a lot of stuff going on.
Darden: Let’s hope you wasn’t doing what Daryl and Gooden was doing. Please don’t. Somebody gonna take this outtake and they’re gonna be like, wait a minute. What’s happening over there at Gracie Mansion? What type of parties they have?
Mayor Adams: A lot was going on, but you know what? We got it done. And know what? A lot goes on in all of our lives. A lot went on with my mother raising the six of us on our own. But she got it done. She got us through college and high school. A lot goes on in all of our lives. And anyone who’s not having a lot going on, they’re not living life.
So, yes, a lot went on. But when you do an analysis, did we deliver for the people of this city? It’s difficult to say, no, we did not. We delivered. And so if my team did not do that connection, because oftentimes teams have their own agendas and we’re
not familiar with it. When you try to run this complicated city, I’ve never had a problem coming on your show. I enjoyed it. I
enjoyed interacting with you. I enjoyed sparring with you on these political topics because they were always good, healthy conversations.
Darden: Now, before we go, Laura, one thing Laura has been very upset about. And like a lot of people in the city is the budget cuts and libraries being cut.
Stylez: And that was one thing that mayor that I was really looking forward to talking to you about, because, you know, all of us are parents or everyone has children. And when we saw the headlines, the public schools, you know, budgets have been cut. It’s affecting the libraries. The libraries are closing partially on certain days.
All of those things had a lot of parents very shook and worried, especially with the insane prices when it comes to child care. Right. And to me, I am very, very passionate about after school programs because I believe they are needed to keep our kids out of trouble. So for the parents and for the people who are very passionate about it, what do you have to say? Like if you were to get reelected again, like how how you know, like how are you going to handle this?
Mayor Adams: Well, so let’s listen to this for a moment, Laura, because it’s very important what you just said. We have placed more children in pre-K, 3K than any other mayor. 150,000 we placed. We just did universal, universal after after school program where children are going to learn robotics, tennis lessons, language, languages, et cetera, universal. And you just talk about child care.
We dropped the cost of child care from two hundred and twenty dollars a month to less than twenty dollars a month. And so all those headlines gives a narrative, but it’s not true. We baseline the dollars and our cultural institutions and others and baseline means it can never go away. We’ll always be in place. And so when you really dig into the story and not just the headline, you’re going to see we have done more for children and families than any administration in this history of this of this city.
Stylez: Wait, so you’re telling me you didn’t cut the public school budget?
Mayor Adams: No, we did not. Matter of fact, we did something… We did something called held harmless, meaning although their student population dropped, we still gave them the same dollar amount because we knew there was learning loss due to COVID. Now, during the budgetary cycle, when the council and the Mayor’s Office go back and forth this far over the budget, it’s not the final product. That’s the negotiation part. That’s the way.
Darden: Hang on right there. It’s important learning for the audience. Yes. So the narrative we get is you guys ping ponging, sparring back and forth about what it should be.
Mayor Adams Yeah.
Darden: And then we but we didn’t see that. We didn’t really get the headline on the final outcome is what you’re saying?
Mayor Adams: Right. Exactly. They get they they’re they’re giving you the in between the innings. You know what I’m saying? You go back and forth. You talk about, okay, we can remember. Remember, we had we had a multibillion dollar hole that was left from the federal government. So now we have to figure out, Okay, what are we going to take off? What do we not?
And we go back and forth with the City Council to get the final product and the final product. There was not the cuts that they talked about in the first inning. They didn’t tell you what happened at the end of the game, that everyone was held. There was no cuts to the libraries. We put in place those programs that were going to sunset. We were able to really go out to those important programs for children and families, and they did extremely well under this administration.
Darden: Well, listen, voting does not happen until November, correct? Yes. So between now and then, we will be reaching out again if we hear or want to update on any of your platforms and plans moving forward into your next term. I’m going to give you an opportunity here, 30 seconds, because I know you got to go to let voters know what are your priorities if you are hired, elected, by voters to keep being the mayor of New York City?
Mayor Adams: Oh, number one, public safety. We have to continue to be safe, drive down crime even more and then focus on families moving forward to build housing. We did our City of Yes. We’re now building more houses throughout the home, throughout the city, but to bring down the lack of housing, to bring down the cost of housing and then putting money back in the pockets of New Yorkers more.
We put 30 billion dollars back in the pockets of New Yorkers, paying off medical debt, reduced fare, MetroCard, free high speed broadband for NYCHA residents. I’m going to look at what we do as a city to put money back into the pockets of New Yorkers so we could challenge the cost of living in the city and in this country.
So it’s about safety. It’s about families. And it’s about making sure our seniors can get the quality of life that they deserve because they made the city what it is. And thank you guys for letting me come on. I look forward and you should hit me up. I’m going to make sure you get my direct cell.
Darden: Listen, I don’t hang out in the clubs like that. I don’t smoke hookah. So that’s probably why. You know what I’m saying? I haven’t seen you enough.
Mayor Adams: Listen, let me tell you something. I revitalized our 30 billion dollar nightlife industry–
Darden: Now, like you said, you was out here testing the product.
Mayor Adams: That’s right. Good to see you, brother.
Darden: All right. Take care, man. Thanks for having me on. Hey, listen, man, you got to be you got a big battle ahead of you. This Mamdani. It’s really you and Mamdani, you feel like. Cuomo… and you got a battle with Cuomo, too.
Mayor Adams: So right, brother. We’re used to battles, you know. Let me tell you what a battle is. Battle is getting through that third grade being called a dumb student, and still going on to become the mayor of the City of New York. With God in your life, everything is possible.
Darden: There you go, Mayor Adams. Thank you for your time today.
Stylez: Thank you, mayor.
Mayor Adams: Thank you. Take care.
July 24, 2025 New York City Hall , Manhattan
Sources: NYC.gov, Big New York news BigNY.com
TV 503 News
