Transcript: Mayor Adams Appears on Flagrant Podcast

April 2, 2025

Andrew Schulz: This is awesome. Thank you so much. Born and raised New Yorkers, Alex and I.

Daniel Sinnett: Far rockaway.

Mayor Eric Adams: Oh, the rock. I had a shorty-

Sinnett: I probably know who your shorty is.

Schulz: This girl's got to be so gassed right now. She's got to be telling everybody, I'm his shorty in Far Rock. I'm his shorty. Do we know who that girl is?

Mayor Adams: You know, it's like, what's that story? What's that show that used to come on with the real? No, the truth. They asked the person, the panelist, questions, and they said, with the real whoever you stand up. I forgot his truth. Is it something true?

Mark Gagnon: Lie to me, maybe? Yeah.

Mayor Adams: Nah, I'll get the name of it to come to me when I come on. So, you know, probably everybody's running around and saying, I'm the shorty. I'm the shorty. I'm the shorty.

Schulz: Oh, so you have a lot of other girls claiming that they are the shorty. So it's possible there could be multiple shorties on Far Rock.

Sinnett: He made that trip one time. He's like, it's too far.

Schulz: We got girls in Jamaica.

Guys, this is the show. Today, our illustrious guest is a true New York success story. I don't know if this has ever happened before. I don't know if it'll ever happen again. From my research, he went from literally one of the dudes doing the squeegee on your car when you're at the stop sign and you don't want it, to mayor of New York City. Give it up for Eric Adams, everybody. Okay, is that true about the squeegee?

Mayor Adams: You know, back then you had to be creative, to just help the family. And, you know, I think that is what the total sum of your life experiences allows you to be whomever you are like you, all of you, you sit in a room, you guys are successful. But think about the total, the total of all of your experiences. Get in here, sit down and have real authentic conversations. That's why people connect with your show. Because of, you know, it's just an authentic conversation.

Schulz: Dude, this is one of the things that we were, you know, as we were doing, like, prep for this, I'm watching all these videos from you. And I'm like, I'm so curious, like, are you aware of the moments you have that go viral? Does it hit you?

Because you say some stuff like obviously the shorty in Far Rock thing was crazy, right? But there are other things you say, like, remember when you were we have the video, I almost want you to watch it. Like when you were teaching the parents how to find drugs in their-

Schulz: So have you watched this?

Mayor Adams: Yes, yes. I love this piece.

[Video Plays.]

Mayor Adams: Now, each one of those scenarios that you saw, the gun in the pillow, the baby doll, those were real scenarios. Because a lot of people don't know if your child or someone in your household is doing something improper, they come in and they do a warrant. They're taking everybody.

Schulz: Oh, they're taking parents?

Mayor Adams: Right, right. And so parents often didn't even know what was happening in their home. And so I said, you know what? I'm getting all these stories. So I said, we're going to do a video to show how you just go through and see what's in your house. Because, you know, children are slick. And there's a lot of indicators. Like, if you see a cut straw with a point on the tip of it, the average parent don't know what that is. I don't know what that is. Back then, you were sniffing coke.

Schulz: I thought that was capri sun.

Mayor Adams: So it's sort of wrong to set parents up and not give them the basic information. Now, there was a lot of people. I got a lot of pushback from those who were saying, oh, you know, you're violating the rights. Listen, in the hood, man, this is real stuff, man. Don't tell me the life you're living. I'm telling you the life in the hood.

Schulz: You're saying you're violating your kids' rights? Like, I feel like in your house, your kids-

Mayor Adams: How many times do I have to say that? Listen, mom would tell me in a minute, man, boy, you don't have no rights.

Schulz: So were you, because this is an interesting story, right? You started out as a kid, and I'm doing some research, and you had a kind of tough upbringing. You were doing some kind of, I mean, around some wild stuff, is this how you were saying it?

Mayor Adams: And now the question is why. When you wake up every morning, there was a ritual. I have a ritual now that I do every morning. But when you woke up every morning.

Schulz: What's the ritual?

Mayor Adams: I'm going to tell you what the ritual was back there when I was a child-

Schulz: Does it have to do with crystals? Because we got some crystals for you.

Mayor Adams: And that's the [thing], stones have a lot of energy. And I want to share that. We got a lot to talk about in an hour and a half.

Schulz: What type of stone? Crack stone has tons of energy.

Mayor Adams: But I used to start the morning, every morning praying, you know, God, don't make me read. God, don't make you read, in school. Because I was dyslexic. And if I read something and stumbled over the words the whole day, you know, kids are cute, but you know what? They would say, let's act like we're Eric reading. They would stumble over, the, the, the. And so the whole day you would go-

When you look at, when you have dyslexia.

[Crosstalk.]

Mayor Adams: Right, right. It mixes up the characters. And so it was to me, I was like, listen, why are you going to school, man? Why are you going in classroom every day? And then I just started, you know, doing numbers back then before numbers were legal.

Schulz: What does that mean to people? Because I think like running numbers means like what? There's like some people that are running a gambling ring and you're making sure that they get those?

Mayor Adams: Great question. Great question.

Schulz: How does that even work?

Mayor Adams: Before the numbers.

Schulz: I sound like I'm snitching right now, but how does it work?

Mayor Adams: Before the lottery system was in place, you look in a newspaper at the racetracks and you see these last three digits, and you could bet on what those last three digits were going to be, you know, on it.

Schulz: So it's a gambling ring. I've heard about this. And I definitely heard that it no longer exists in the Dominican neighborhoods in New York. They definitely don't have their own gambling ring or lottery system. So that's what the lottery would be.

Mayor Adams: Exactly.

Schulz: And if you could predict those numbers, they're privatized.

Mayor Adams: 50 cent, 50 [cent], 25 cents would give you a certain dollar amount. 50 cents would give you a certain amount. So you walk around with these slips, you go around the community, they come inside the stores and they say, okay, I think 382. I had a dream last night and I saw 382. You'll bet on that.

People bet all the time on those numbers and [inaudible]. There were newspapers that were in the community, a whole industry around numbers.

Schulz: Giving you advice on the numbers.

Mayor Adams: And so, what I learned later in life, like I learned, I was dyslexic in college and I heard a young lady listening to a documentary on dyslexia and I took it out and I said, wait a minute, man, I'm not dumb. I'm dyslexic.

So I went from a D student to A student, once I learned. Now, when you look at all these young people who are incarcerated, 30 to 40 percent of them across the country are dyslexic or have a learning disability.

Schulz: They're struggling in school, there's no other opportunity to do-

Mayor Adams: So the crime is not only what they did on the streets, it's what we're doing to them.

Schulz: Right, so being able to diagnose these things earlier, same with like mental health.

Mayor Adams: Right now we're doing dyslexia screening. So we're catching a young person and giving them the services that they need that they don't feel that they're done.

Schulz: How do you even fix dyslexia? What do you do?

Mayor Adams: All you do is learn differently. Your mind process, because the words are mumbled. The letters are mumbled, jumbled, mixed up, but you, once you learn how to process and learn differently, how you learn.

Schulz: You can reorganize.

Mayor Adams: Exactly. Exactly. And so that led to, like you said, all that crazy stuff you were doing. I was saying, well, why am I sitting in school? Why am I going there?

Schulz: Once you become the A student, now you go, I need to put those other people in jail.

Mayor Adams: Like that's how you feel like-

Schulz: Why would these criminals take advantage of my disability and put me on the streets? That's how you get locked up.

Akaash Singh: Do you know how many dyslexic people you've locked up?

Mayor Adams: Think about it. I've bumped into people all the time who [are] successful in business. When they hear, my journey being dyslexic, they all stop me and say, Eric, you know, I went through the same thing. I'm successful in business because once you push through that, you find that you get through just about anything. So when people run around now yelling, booing, oh, we don't like this. Cause you're in New York. 8.3 million people, 35 million opinions. I say to them, that's all you got? You know, all you got is to call me a name. Listen, I'm so used to being called names. I used to get called names every morning.

Schulz: What's the best thing you've been called? Like, is there ever anything you've been called? You're like, nah, that's kind of funny.

Mayor Adams: I don't know. Probably [] is not the top one. You know, listen, hurt people, hurt people. And they hurt themselves. It's not like, I hate you, Eric. No, people are hating themselves.

And they express that hate, you know, through how they treat people. Cause we're in a place now where everyone is so mean spirited, man. We no longer, the people don't do this. Like, this is powerful when you can sit down and have deep, right. We should seek to understand so that we can be understood.

Schulz: That's, we have that conversation all the time here, which is like, nobody wants to understand anybody. Everybody wants to like dunk, score a point so that their party or affiliation or group feels good about themselves instead of trying to like understand what that person's going through.

Mayor Adams: And social media makes it even worse.

Schulz: Yeah, cause you're getting, you're getting patted on the back every time you do it. There's like a reward system.

Mayor Adams: Right. And it's a coalescence of everyone who has an ill feeling,

Schulz: Now you're all alone with your ill feeling.

Mayor Adams: Right. And you can coalesce around, you know, this, you know, this feeling that you have, no matter what group you are. I did an experiment the other day. I say, just think of the, anything you think about, there's a population out there. I say, let me just find people that like grass, you know, not cannabis, grass.

Schulz: You know, you don't like the weed.

Mayor Adams: Right. You know, and it's unbelievable how many people call us around that. First of all, I do, I feel people should have a right to smoke cannabis if they want. My concern, as I said when I was running for office, is that we have a real educational problem. And our children start [their] day… These teachers tell me, Eric, these kids are high all the time.

Mayor Adams: You know, you, if you start your day walking to school and you know, you're smoking a joint, you're sitting inside the classroom, you smoking a joint during a period. These children are not going to be ready. It's particularly at a younger age when their brains are really developing, there's some real science. So if an adult wants to smoke, go, go do your thing. But we have to be real concerned about what's happening with our children and cannabis.

Schulz: I feel like most people are supportive of that. I think most adults in New York would go, hey, we got to keep weed out of the kids and we got to protect the kids. I feel like, yeah, I feel like most adults in New York are supportive of that.

I almost feel like there's a lot of support around issues in New York, but there's not a lot of understanding on how issues get fixed. And that's one of the things about, like, I'm always curious when I talk to elected officials, it's like, you're, it's your fault. No matter what happens, it's your fault. Even if you don't have the power to change it.

Mayor Adams: Especially the mayor, man.

Schulz: Bro. So it's like, and I always say this. I'm like, the mayor is the second most powerful position in America. The mayor of New York.

Mayor Adams: Right. Right.

Schulz: I didn't even know that the governor was a woman until like a month ago. We had a blind guy governor. I didn't know.

Singh: New York is not a state. It's a city.

Mayor Adams: Right, right. There you go.

Singh: You ask people in Texas, New York, they're not thinking of the state. I grew up in Texas. I only thought of the city.

Schulz: And that is our, I guess our blind spot is like not seeing outside the city, but it's like, if you are, there's the president of the United States. And then next it's the mayor of New York. And then there's the rest of the people in government.

Mayor Adams: And that's why civics is crucial. So people can understand who's responsible. For these different things. Because when you're the mayor, I don't care what it is, man.

Schulz: It's your fault.

Mayor Adams: Guy stepped [up] to me a couple of months ago, man, saying, listen, I'm getting divorced. You know, it's your fault.

Schulz: [He said] you had sex with my wife in Far Rockaway.

Gagnon: That one is your fault.

Mayor Adams: [Those] are the cases. So people will say, well, you know, the trains are not operating the way they're supposed to. That's the state, man. That's not the city.

Schulz: Oh, so, so wait, the trains meaning like…

Mayor Adams: Our subway, the two, three, four, and five. The state is in charge of that.

Schulz: The state is in charge of the MTA.

Mayor Adams: Right. Our job is to protect the people. I'm in charge of the police in the system. And what we've done in the system is unbelievable. A lot of people, when I walk in rooms and I say, tell me how many crimes you think, serious crimes you think happen in the subway system. People say a hundred, two hundred, three hundred a day. We have 4.6 million riders every day.

Schulz: Yeah.

Mayor Adams: We have six felonies a day. Out of 4.6 million. I don't feel like going to work. I'm pissed off, people on the subway. It's a miracle that we're able to move that volume of people every day and deal with the mental health issues down in the subway system. People are attracted to it.

[Commercial Break.]

Schulz: So there's a good question, right? It's like there are two things. There [is] the data, the facts, like the reality of what's happening. And then there's the feeling that people have.

Mayor Adams: Without a doubt.

Schulz: And we have to be careful that if people have that feeling, we don't make them feel stupid for having it. Because being scared in the subway is a real feeling. And maybe now that there's more phone videos and I hear about all these stories like, I know my wife, she says she feels uncomfortable in the subway. I know. Probably now because she uses it to Uber. But this is a convenient excuse.

But no, like some of the girls that work for us also say they have that feeling. When I grew up in the city, I was like sleeping on the subway on the way to school. I never even, now don't get me wrong, I got robbed before. But it wasn't on the subway. It was like there's people around.

Mayor Adams: So now ask yourself, because I'm big on that. Back in 2022, when I said, listen, we have to deal with the perception and the reality, people attacked me when I said that. They said, well, perception doesn't matter. I said, yes, it does.

Schulz: Perception matters more.

Mayor Adams: Because I was a transit cop.

Schulz: I remember.

Mayor Adams: And so what happens, so now we have to ask ourselves, why do people feel unsafe in the subway system?

Schulz: Why do you think?

Mayor Adams: Because every day we take the worst thing that happens on purpose, and every day we blast it. Every day, every day. And so you wake up in the morning, open the paper, oh, someone got pushed on the subway track. Now, you may have never had a negative experience.

Someone got pushed on a subway track. Then you go down in the system and you see someone walking with no shoes on, no shirt on, and they're yelling and screaming. You hear noise. You hear it's not clean enough. You begin to say to yourself, oh, I feel unsafe.

Schulz: Yeah.

Mayor Adams: I feel unsafe. And so what I have to do, as you said, I'm not going to go to you and insult you and say you shouldn't feel a certain way. No, I have to answer that fear. So that's why we put a thousand more cops in the system. We have them riding the trains back and forth. When I was a transit cop, that's what I did. I rode it back and forth because we know the omnipresence of that uniform can deal with that perception. Now, we have a record decrease in crime, but that means nothing if people don't feel safe.

Schulz: Well, maybe it's a combination of both of those things. Maybe it's telling people, "hey, we are going to address that and we're putting more cops out there so you feel safe." And then after that going, "hey, by the way, crime statistics compared from last quarter or whatever you do are down 50 percent. So look at this positive influence that's happening." And I feel like all too often it's people going, no, you idiots. Look, crime is way better. And then they're like, don't call me an idiot. [] you.

Singh: And I get some pushback on above ground. I walk around New York City a lot. I moved here in '08 and I will say it feels less safe. Like just seeing- I was walking here one day from 59th. It was a long walk, but I was like, let's do it. On one block, I see like four guys shooting heroin. I see another guy, a literal piece of his intestine sticking out of his stomach covered in what looks like [].

That's not- when I go to Penn Station. I used to live in Jersey. I take it every day. I see people shooting up heroin right outside. These are not things that make me feel safe. And that is a crime. You know, even then it might not be aggravated, but like I'm not even saying this to like dunk on you or whatever, but I will say as someone who's lived here 17 years, it does feel less safe when I'm walking through and I see stuff that makes me feel like this doesn't feel better.

Sinnett: And I would tell him, I was like, for a person who grew up here my entire life, it's safer than it's ever been. That's why it's just so weird hearing that. Cause I'm like, yo. If you saw Times Square back in the day.

Singh: But that's what I'm saying. It might be safer than it was in 1998, but I don't think it was safer personally than it was in 2009.

Schulz: I think a lot of this, a lot of the sentiment is like, we went through a pretty tough time in New York where it was like, there were a lot of things that were quite commonplace.

Singh: You started stealing cause you're dyslexic. Like I mix up letters. Let me just start running numbers.

Schulz: How could you read if it was a Jansport?

Mayor Adams: When you go back to when they were growing up and you go back to that period of time, graffiti was everywhere on all our trains. You can see, you should see some of the pictures, man. And so understand that's why [] is important because when you see something like right now, when I came, when I became mayor, we were having encampments all over. People living in cardboard boxes and tents on the side of highways.

And when we came in, we said, listen, people are not living that way. January and February of 2022, I went into the streets to talk to people that lived in these encampments. Saw human waste, drug paraphernalia, stale food, bipolar, schizophrenia. And so we came up with a real initiative that said, listen, we clean up these encampments and we put people in housing. We got a huge pushback, huge pushback. The City Council passed a law that said people should have the right to sleep on the streets.

So when you have those governmental entities that are extreme left in their philosophies. What everyday New Yorkers want, they're pushing back. I'm fighting tooth and nail to do involuntary removal. Like you said, someone, you saw someone injecting themselves, undressed, screaming, not taking care of themselves. I'm fighting to say, I got to get this person in care. He doesn't know he needs care. These are the battles we have that fall outside the scope of what the mayor can do.

Sinnett: We have CCTV everywhere, but why don't we have any security cameras inside the subway cars?

Mayor Adams: Oh, we do. We're going to have, we're going to, right now. We're going to build out all the trains, but the governor has done an amazing job where we have cameras in the cars and they're going to be cameras in every car, which is huge because that allows us to pick up on any illegal behavior. It allows us- we caught the guy that burned a woman to death because of that camera and that footage. So we do, and eventually every train is going to have a camera.

Schulz: I feel like sometimes cops are like this backstop to all the problems in society. So mental health we're not addressing, right? And there's a person that's crazy on the street, and then there's a cop who might not be trained in how to deal with crazy people. He's trained in how to uphold the law. But now it's his responsibility to protect these people from crazy people and to protect that crazy person from themselves.

And I wonder if there's like, I don't know if it's expansion or more specific division, but it seems like a lot of the problems we see on the streets that are making people feel unsafe are people who are dealing with like severe mental illness.

Mayor Adams: Without a doubt. We have three issues that overshadowed our success. We turned around the city. No one thought I could do it, and they told me it was going to take five years. We did it in two years. There are three issues that have-

Schulz: I love that. I can't even tell you you didn't.

Singh: I feel less safe, and I feel stupid for feeling less safe. I'm like, this guy told me to turn around.

Schulz: There's no more rats. The rats are gone. Get all the rats out of here.

Mayor Adams: Well, they're indicators. They're indicators of the success of a city. And so you look at the financials, we have more jobs in New York in the city's history. More small businesses in the city's history. Double digits decrease in homicide, shootings, the seven major crime categories. Fourth largest tourism in the city's history.

Build more affordable housing in year one and year two. Individual years in the city's history. More people out of homelessness into permanent homes in year one and year two in the city's history. Drop unemployment around all demographics in the city, but particularly Black and Hispanics by 20 percent. So they're indicators that people look and see. Let me see the success of the city.

When you look at the indicators, it shows how successful we are. And bond raters, these people who look and say, okay, is this city being well managed so that we can give you a bond rating so that people see if they're going to invest in your city? They raised my bond and then came back out of all that we went through. They say, "we still want to keep this bond rating high because this mayor has managed COVID, managed 230,000 migrants and asylum seekers that came into the city." So they've watched how I managed the city.

Schulz: So just the bond thing is people can invest in cities. They're called municipal bonds, right?

Mayor Adams: Yeah, a combination of bonds. They're industry bond raters, Fitch, S&P. These are guys that look at your cities and say, "okay, what are we going to say to our investors? How well is this city being managed?"

Schulz: And the fact that the rating maintained?

Mayor Adams: High. They scrutinize, they're hard, they look at everything, how you manage your money. And they said, this guy has managed this city.

Singh: You raised the city's credit score. Take that, racists.

Schulz: So tell us what happened with the migrant crisis.

Mayor Adams: Oh, great question. Great question. Think about it. First, I want to tell you the three things that overshadowed our success. And then I want to talk about the migrants. One, random acts of violence. Nothing impacts your feeling of being unsafe, you're a woman walking down a block, someone punches you in the face out of nowhere. You know, random acts of violence.

One guy dealing with severe mental health issues that should not have been on the street, stabs three people. Those shock everyone. That has overshadowed our success. Mental health. That's tied to mental health.

The second is recidivism. We have cats that are committing crimes repeatedly. Repeatedly. They made up their minds. We have 575 people.

Schulz: They made up their mind.

Mayor Adams: They're going to break the law.

Schulz: You put them in jail and they're like, "Nah, I'm committed to his []."

Gagnon: Can't stop, won't stop.

Mayor Adams: You can't have 575 people who are arrested for shoplifting and they have been arrested over 7,500 times. 36 people who have assaulted people in the subway system have been arrested over 1,600 times. With this revolving door system and trying to convince our lawmakers in Albany that, yo, this is a problem, you know, and they're real problems.

Schulz: So who can do that? Because I think a lot of people blame you for that as the mayor, right? And that's got to be frustrating because you're like, yo, I'm not the D.A. You guys elected the D.A. It's not like you even placed them there, right? No. So who decides?

Mayor Adams: The judges have to get on board. But there was a great deal of reform passed in Albany that it was, conceptually, it was a great idea.

Schulz: What was the concept?

Mayor Adams: It was, that was when you hear bail reform, discovery reform, raise the age reform. This is a lot of reform because we don't want a heavy handed criminal justice system when everyone is being locked up for no matter what they do.

Schulz: You want to give people an opportunity to have a life after making a mistake.

Mayor Adams: Exactly.

Schulz: But if they're repeat people, like you said, they're committed to that.

Mayor Adams: And that's what we're trying to show them that, listen, the data is showing these reforms you did in 2019 is having a negative impact on public safety. And it has been very centered on people who commit crimes. But what about the people who are the victims of these crimes? We have to start talking about those who are victims of these crimes.

Singh: So what would your solution be? Because three strikes doesn't seem that fair either. So what would your solution be?

Mayor Adams: It's not so much saying three strikes, two strikes. The judges must use the determination. Is it a danger releasing you? Is it a danger releasing you? Judge has to make that call. Is it a danger releasing you, putting you back in society? If you're arrested in a short period of time for repeated burglary, you making up your mind, "Listen, you can let me out as much as you want. I'm going to continue to do the crime."

Schulz: We have to prioritize law abiding citizens over the ones that are breaking the law, the safety thereof.

Mayor Adams: And that's what we don't do.

Schulz: Yeah, and I get the idea. Like you said, the idea was good. You don't want a too heavy handed justice system where these people make mistakes and then they don't have opportunity in their life thereafter. As you said, as a young kid, you did some silly []. I know I did some silly [].

Mayor Adams: We all did.

Schulz: We did. We weren't going to talk about it, but we can.

Sinnett: The problem with that, a lot of people are doing like petty crimes and they didn't have money to bond out. So they would just sit in jail for until they're-

Schulz: So they're trying to solve that problem?

Mayor Adams: And that's why, and I'm a big believer in nonviolent crimes. If you are-

Schulz: What do you mean you're a believer in it?

Mayor Adams: I'm a believer that we should not be heavy handed.

Schulz: With the nonviolent crimes, yeah.

Mayor Adams: Now, what we want to do is, hey, you have a drug problem. You're going into Rite Aid over and over again and you're doing shoplifting. Listen, we're going to give you a pathway to deal with that drug issue. So we don't want to be heavy handed. And those are the alternative to incarceration. Give people the support they need. Because a lot of people think, okay, well shoplifting is a victimless crime. That's not true.

If that Rite Aid closed down, Ms. Jones now has to get on the bus and go to get a drug store that's a mile away from her now that costs her money. The people who worked in that Rite Aid are now losing their jobs in the same process. It impacts your economy. So we need to make sure that we send the right message that you can't have a revolving door system.

So let's talk about the migrants. So out of nowhere, we started getting in a large flow of migrants. Now, this is a city of immigrants. And it's a city that has always been open to immigrants. There's a reason that the Statue of Liberty sits in our harbor.

Sinnett: Sanctuary city, right?

Mayor Adams: Right. It's a sanctuary city.

Schulz: Which is another separate issue. I think what you're saying, like culturally, migrants aren't as shocking to New Yorkers. I always tell people this is like, you can't even tell who the migrant is.

Mayor Adams: So we started getting busloads.

Schulz: By design, right?

Mayor Adams: Right, right, right. It was coming from Texas. But it was the failure that we didn't secure our borders. We were allowing everyone to come into the country with unsecured borders, many gang members, very dangerous.

When I went down to Ecuador, Colombia, and Mexico to look at the flow, there was a place called the Darien Gap. So I went down there to see why people coming and try to explain to the government that New York City, the streets are not paved with gold. Because everybody thinks you come to New York City, everything is fine.

Singh: Yeah, it's paved in rat [].

Schulz: So that might be a delicious meal. You gotta be careful with that one either.

Sinnett: Don't gross me out.

Mayor Adams: I'm still grossed out over that.

Singh: It's vegan.

Mayor Adams: And so people got upset because they said, man, what you doing? You know, you let everybody come into the city, you're paying for them.

Schulz: Very reasonable.

Mayor Adams: Right. So what people didn't understand, I couldn't stop the buses from coming in. The federal law said you can't, Eric. I couldn't even allow them to work. The federal law said you can't even allow them to work. And a group of migrants and asylum seekers came to me and said, "listen, we want to contribute to the city. Let us remove graffiti. Let us clean the streets. Give us a stipend." Federal government said you can't even do that. And the city law says everyone that comes here, you must give them three meals a day. You must house them.

Schulz: That's the sanctuary city law. But that wasn't built for migrants. It was built for our homeless population, hoping that you would take people from the homelessness, you know, going through a rough time and then they would be housed.

Mayor Adams: Without a doubt. Over 40 years in existence.

Schulz: Yeah, it's kind of unfortunate that that was taken advantage of like that. And it was done, in my opinion, and I'd like to hear your opinions, but I think it was like a political tool specifically done to make more liberal leaning cities seem uninhabitable.

Mayor Adams: And I think the message was because, it should not happen to- when I went down to El Paso. They should not have had to have gone through that. No, Brownsville, Texas. Right. Right. No one should have to go through that.

Singh: I think growing up in Texas, they feel like New Yorkers, L.A. or whatever. They judge you a lot, especially in New York. But y'all don't deal with what we deal with. Now, see how you like it.

Schulz: I think that's fair, too. A lot of times New Yorkers or even people in different parts of California, but like these coastal elitist cities, they're just kind of like, yeah, just don't. Building a wall is bad. Don't secure the board. How dare you? It's like, we're not dealing with it. So who are we to say what the issue is?

Mayor Adams: And so where they went wrong, where the governor of Texas went wrong is that we were saying, "Hey, we hear you. Let's collaborate together and send that message." Not just, listen, I'm not going to punish another municipality because the federal government is screwing up. So when we reached out to them and said, "Listen, we're on the same page with you. Your city should not be going through this. Let's get together. Let's work together." No, I just want to.

Schulz: So now this is the dunk culture we're talking about. Instead of having that dialogue and you coming together. And I think at that moment you were like a surrogate in the Biden administration. Like you were somebody who was like working with them. You were hand chosen, by the way. It's not like everybody's a surrogate.

You want one of the most powerful positions in the country, the mayor of New York on your side if you're the administration. So you're like, if you go and extend yourself to a conservative governor and say, well, let's work together. And they go, no, thank you. We're going to send the buses.

Mayor Adams: Exactly.

Schulz: That's some cornball [].

Singh: I don't like wheels. Not a fan.

Mayor Adams: And so we lost, we lost an opportunity because when I went down to El Paso and I saw people sleeping on the streets and airports, I said, this is not right, even for El Paso.

My position was no city should take on a federal responsibility. And that was my advocacy. I went to Washington 10 times to speak with the lawmakers. I met with the president twice, President Biden twice around this issue. And his people, they were giving him misinformation. They were not being honest to him.

Schulz: Who were his people? That's, I think, yeah. Who were his people?

Mayor Adams: There were several people who were close that was in charge of this issue that was supposed to be giving him the right information. And I told him, I said, Mr. President-

Singh: Maybe they told him and he just forgot. He's a little old. You know what I mean?

Schulz: But I'm just curious about these people because that's what we've heard a lot about, sometimes, with the Biden administration. And I don't want to make this like a political thing, but like just this idea that maybe there were other people that were in his ear or making certain decisions that he might not have been privy to. Because if you spoke to him and he seemed like an amicable, nice guy who was understanding what's going on, like where's the disconnect here?

Mayor Adams: You know, what's interesting in government, particularly on the federal level, people have their own agendas as well. And there was so much going on back then of people pushing back on the concept. There are some people with a philosophy that our borders should be open and any and everyone should be able to come in no matter what. I don't believe in that.

Schulz: As part of government?

Mayor Adams: Right. Here's what I said to the administration. I said, listen, no one should- Right now, people are coming into the country, not knowing anyone in the country, not knowing where they're going. I said, "Listen, we're having, in our country, we're having population problems."

There are a lot of cities that are dealing with population issues. "Let's tell people, we're going to tell you where you're going to go for three years. If Kentucky needs people to be backstretch workers to race and work in the racing industry, you're going to Kentucky. After you do your three years, then you can go anywhere in the country and apply. This way, we're connecting your need to be in America with the need that America needs."

Schulz: It's a fantastic idea.

Mayor Adams: And we're controlling the flow. You're not coming in if you're part of a gang, which they were doing. They said, hey, the border's open-

Schulz: Let's go.

[Commercial Break].

Mayor Adams: This was deep. When I was in Ecuador, Ecuadorians didn't want to leave their country and come to America. They love being in their country. When I went down and I spoke to the people, they said the gangs have taken over.

Schulz: So they're looking for a reprieve from the gang violence.

Mayor Adams: Right. And then they came here to New York.

Schulz: And they were like, they over here too.

Mayor Adams: That's exactly what happened. People were like, when I go, you know, because I spent the night in a migrant and asylum seeker shelter, one of our shelters. I spent the night to talk to them and find out, you know, why did you flee? What are you going through?

They said "The gangs are here. They're preying on us." And so when I say that, listen, you're a gang member, you're recognized as a terrorist, you commit crimes, you can't be here. You cannot prey on migrants and you cannot prey on everyday Americans. You can't be here.

So now people want to say, this is what's really deep, because so much politics is in play. People say, you're anti-immigrant, anti-immigrant. So I got the national immigrant leaders, the national people who fight this nationally. I said, I want you to come to the city and see what I'm doing. They said, "We don't want to come here because you're anti-immigrant. We don't want to come. We don't want to talk to you." And I said, well, at least come.

They came to the city. They spent the day with Ana, D.M. Almazar, the first Dominican deputy mayor in the history of the city. They came, spent the day with her. They met me at Gracie Mansion, had dinner. They said, "We got to apologize to you". They said, no one in the country is doing what you're doing. We're going to write a letter to Washington and say the country needs to follow your model.

We fed, housed, clothed, educated 40,000 children. Put people on the pathway for citizenship. What we did with 230,000 people, 190,000 have left our care and went on to their next journey. What we did, no one in the country was doing. But when you pick up the papers, you walk away and saying, "this guy hates immigrants. This guy is anti-immigrant."

Schulz: Yeah, but I think that's one of those things where it's like very easy politicized. I got frustrated with that too. All of us are kids of immigrants on this podcast, every single one of us. This idea that we are not supportive of immigration is kind of absurd. Also, coming in New York, you've heard those criticisms in New York. You're like, what the [] are you talking about? Somebody from Maine is going to tell me about immigrants.

Singh: I'm a New York immigrant.

Gagnon: If anything, you almost hear the opposite, where it's like, they're putting migrants in hotels and they're putting them up and they're taking over city blocks. It's almost the opposite, where it's almost too accommodating.

Mayor Adams: And that's what I was saying, but some people don't talk about that.

Schulz: So it's like you either hate immigrants or they're staying at the Four Seasons. But I think that was the thing that New Yorkers started to get pushback, which is like New Yorkers, obviously struggling. Cost of living has gone up. Like you were saying, housing prices are crazy. And then you're hearing these stories about these people that are migrating to New York, right? And they're getting put up at the hotel outside of Madison Square Garden, getting three meals a day. You're like, "Yo, my kid's getting two meals a day." So you understand their concern and resentment.

Mayor Adams: Without a doubt. Without a doubt.

Schulz: And you're in this situation where you're like, the federal government is not helping me with this situation at all. And I'm shackled by my limitations as a city to even put these people to work or do anything. So now the center of the federal government, through law, is making me put them up and feed them at the potential disadvantage to my own constituents. And then you just got to sit there and take it.

Mayor Adams: What you just stated and here's the impact of this. This is what's deep about this moment. That they were standing in tents. Randall's Island, Creedmoor. We put up a tent. Floyd Bennett Field. Tents. I went to go to these tents. Now, it was the best we could do in the circumstances. Roosevelt Hotel was our intake center.

Schulz: So you go to Roosevelt first and then you go?

Mayor Adams: You go to one of these other locations.

Schulz: Gotcha. But once the narrative hits the news.

Mayor Adams: There you are.

Schulz: You go on a Knicks game sitting courtside. You migrate to America and you're sitting courtside.

Mayor Adams: That was not the reality. But then this is what angered me. This was the tipping point where I decided I got to publicly criticize the administration, the Biden administration.

Schulz: Yeah. When did that happen? Because that was very brave I thought.

Mayor Adams: The money, this cost us $7 billion. Now, we have a fixed budget. You know, we have a fixed budget. And so if you take- just think about if you're a homeowner and you take and you have your budget to do your lights, your gas, your budget for your repairs. All of a sudden, the roof caves in. You want your insurance company to give you your payment.

Schulz: I think that's very reasonable.

Mayor Adams: And if the insurance company tells you, "Hey, we're not giving you anything." Now, you got to take it out of somewhere. So I had to take $7 billion out of the services for our city. The long-term impact of that is what troubles me.

Schulz: Right.

Mayor Adams: That's the- because I could have taken $200 million of that to go to chronically absent children. Cause we had a lot of children that are chronically absent after COVID. I could have taken $500 million and went to my adult care. I could have-

Schulz: And what you're saying is that this is a federal issue. The federal government is responsible for protecting the borders of this country. You are dealing with their lack of effort to protect the country and they're going, "But you also got to pay for it." Yeah, I understand where that feels unfair.

Mayor Adams: You know what their response after going there all the time, they said, "Eric, this is like a gallbladder. It's going to hurt now, but it'll pass." I said, then you [] it out.

Schulz: Okay, so listen, and I don't want to get conspiratorial, but I don't get conspiratorial, but after you come out and I thought like very reasonably criticized them, right? A little bit afterwards, all of a sudden the Justice Department looks into Eric Adams. Now listen, I don't want to get, I don't want to get conspiratorial here, but we're going to get conspiratorial.

They look into Eric Adams and then they, and there's this thing about Turkish airlines, right? I think that they were targeting you cause you're bald and maybe you're going to get-

Mayor Adams: And I wear an earring.

Schulz: So this is what bothered me the most, it was the dollar amount. If you are being corrupted, it better be more than a hundred [] thousand dollars. Please God. Now listen, I know there's a level of corruption in government all over the place, but if you were the mayor of New York City, have some [] respect for yourself. It's got to be $20 million or some []. So can you- do you think there's any connection to those two things?

Mayor Adams: You're darn right I do. You know, the timing of it, the leaking, the public embarrassment and humiliation.

Schulz: What was the leaking?

Mayor Adams: They were leaking information, part of the case. They were just leaking it out. You know, grand jury testimonies are supposed to be private and secret.

Schulz: And then all of a sudden they start-

Mayor Adams: Ending up in the same paper over and over again. The New York Times over and over again. So think, and a lot of people never read the indictment.

Schulz: Of course not. Anyway, keep going.

Mayor Adams: They never read the indictment. The whole premise of their indictment, I was the borough president at the time. The Turkish Embassy was going to open. The president was coming and they were going through the bureaucracy, the madness of it.

Schulz: And if you've ever built a thing or renovated in this [] city.

Mayor Adams: And I ran on the platform that government must be more fluid and it can't be bureaucratic. I called the fire commissioner and say, can you at least go do an inspection? Can somebody go do an inspection so that they can see if they can pass their inspection? And I said, if you can't do it, let me know. And I'll manage their expectations.

All of this is in the indictment. Let me know and I'll manage their expectations. I didn't tell them to go pass them. I didn't tell them to go pass the rules, ignore it. I said, no, just go do a darn inspection. The guy's asking for an inspection.

So they said, well, you know what? The federal government said, well, they gave you upgrades throughout the years. And we're going to attach that to when you call them and say you were bribed.

Schulz: Upgrades on a flight.

Mayor Adams: On a plane, yeah. And say that you were bribed. They use all of this, these numbers.

Schulz: For upgrades. To say you're buying a regular coach ticket, but the fact that you get bumped up means you're in their pocket 100 percent.

Mayor Adams: Exactly.

Singh: Why did you get bumped up? Because I didn't even know that secret.

Mayor Adams: Who hasn't flown and said, I mean, tell me someone who hasn't flown and said, hey, I see you got an empty seat in business. You know what I'm saying? You know, but to take down a city mayor of the largest, the largest city in America.

And then when you looked at the text messages that were leaked a few weeks ago of them talking about it and you know, the U.S. attorney, he may have a political agenda here. Right, right, right. They found their text messages and their communications.

Schulz: So it exposed their-

Mayor Adams: Yes, yes, yes.

Schulz: And that gets leaked by whom?

Mayor Adams: No, the judge ordered it to be released.

Schulz: Oh my God.

Mayor Adams: The judge ordered it to be released. But, you know, if you really want to-

Schulz: And they've dropped this case, right? Like, well, nobody will prosecute it.

Mayor Adams: The U.S. attorney said it was a weak case. The new incoming U.S. attorney said it was a weak case. They put it in to have it dismissed. The judge said, basically, "I don't want to dismiss it on my own opinion. Let me get an independent person to look over and make the determination what I need to do."

That independent person came back three weeks ago and said, you need to dismiss this case. And so we're now waiting for the judge to look at what his independent person said. We believe he should agree with the independent person, what he said.

Listen, I did nothing wrong. How do you, you know what I mean? I lived a public life for over 40 years. And I know that, listen, everyone in New York, you're scrutinized and watched. I know how I live my life. I did nothing wrong. This was traumatizing to my family. You know, but you're in public life. You have to fight hard.

Now, the real test for me was 15 months ago when the indictment came down. I could have easily said, you know what? Let me just-

Schulz: I resign.

Mayor Adams: Right. People would say, "Oh, you need to resign." I was like, I'm not going anywhere. I did nothing wrong.

Schulz: People were leaving you, right?

Mayor Adams: Right, right, right, right, right.

Schulz: And now where are they going?

Mayor Adams: You know, that's the truth. That's how, you know, true folks are.

Schulz: Because who else would hire somebody that left at the first sign of trouble?

Mayor Adams: Listen, look, God, you know, I don't know your spiritual belief, but my belief is clear. God is good, man. You know that?

Schulz: All the time.

Mayor Adams: And God, God, and all the time, God is good. Look at you, man. You sound like a Baptist preacher. You know, but we have to live it in the midst of that.

Schulz: But it is a shot at your, like, political career. Is it frustrating to not, or do you know who you think it came from? Like, is Biden aware of this? Or is it the people that are like underneath Biden? Is it completely separate?

Mayor Adams: That's a great question. That's a great question. You know, there are a lot of people, you know, and I don't want to sound conspiracy theory, but there's a permanent government. There are people that see presidents and mayors come and go. Their attitudes will wait you out.

You know what book is a great book, man. Everybody should read the book. Kash Patel's Government Gangsters. You should read that book, man. Kash breaks this down. He's now the FBI director.

Schulz: Of course, of course, we like Kash. But is this like what people refer to? And I think this word has been used too much, but like the deep state or whatever it is.

Mayor Adams: It's not used too much. It's real, brother.

Schulz: Oh, really?

Mayor Adams: Think about it.

Schulz: Who's part of it? Are there current like senators and that kind of stuff? Or is it people that we don't even know, but they're always existing?

Mayor Adams: You know, I have never seen anyone do such a good job of defining that deep state. You should have him on.

Schulz: I would love to. Tell him to come on. We would love it.

Mayor Adams: The way he-

Schulz: He's probably listening right now, right?

Mayor Adams: The way- because he was in. It's like me talking about what happens in the NYPD after 22 years. Kash was in the DOD. He was in the FBI. He prosecuted terrorists. So he comes with this wealth of knowledge and the way he breaks it down, it's just unbelievable what this deep state is about and why it's so important for Americans that we cannot have a weaponizing of our prosecutorial powers.

Imagine the Southern District, right? Southern District of New York. That's one of the most powerful U.S. Attorney's Offices. In their mind, they say, we're sovereign. You know what that means?

Schulz: What do you mean they said they're sovereign?

Mayor Adams: They don't have to answer to anyone. They don't have to answer to the president. They don't have to answer to the U.S. General in Washington. They believe they're a sovereign entity. You're not elected. Imagine an entity believing they don't have to answer to anyone but their entity.

Schulz: You have to answer to the people and ultimately the people that we put in power.

Sinnett: I'm curious. What do you say to people saying that Trump played a role in the DOJ dropping the case? Because it's like, it kind of looked like you went to Mar-a-Lago.

Singh: The timing does seem-

Sinnett: And then all of a sudden-

Schulz: He had you back at that Catholic dinner. He was like, it's wrong what they did. And I thought that that was like a really interesting thing to even say. He said it kind of flippantly, which I thought was more effective because he could have went and made a big deal of it.

He was like, "Eh, it's wrong what they're doing." And I've always wondered if he felt- And people are going to say we're apologizing for Trump or whatever. But I've always wondered if he felt like they're doing the same thing to him. You tell me.

Mayor Adams: Come on, brother. Come on, come on. Listen, people say, this is what those who have Trump derangement syndrome are saying. Because there's some folks, I'm not the type of cat that- I respect the office. The presidency is in office. It's representative of our country. Presidents come and go. Mayors come and go. I'm a big believer, I'm a patriot. I believe in the American flag. My uncle died at 19 defending this country. I wore a bulletproof vest for the city. My brother did as well. So I believe in the symbol of office.

So I don't have to like who's in office. I respected Biden to the fullest extent. I respect the office. So when President Trump was on a campaign trail, before he was elected, he was saying, "Look what they're doing to this man in New York." He said, "This is wrong what they're doing to this man in New York." He never asked me for anything.

I believe he personally saw what they did to- it's one thing to do something to the individual. But when you start doing something to your family members, and I think there was something he saw, because out of everything he had on his campaign trail, he didn't have to come out on his campaign trail and say, this is wrong what they're doing to Eric. He did it at rallies. He did it the day before the election, when he's at Madison Square Garden, a few days before the election, on a Sunday. He said, look what they're doing to this mayor in New York.

So there was never- they say, well, there was a quid pro quo. You are now trying to be hard on immigration. I said, show me what I said after he was elected that I wasn't saying before he was elected. The same thing that I was saying before he was elected. You commit a crime, you need to get out of our country. That's the same thing that I was saying.

And let me just drop this on you that a lot of people don't realize. ICE is a law enforcement organization. I mean, I'm not going to say I'm not going to corroborate with any law enforcement organization to keep our city safe. Now, you may, people may not like ICE. That's your opinion. But it's a law enforcement organization. That's not criminalizing a law enforcement organization. And there's some people coming into the country to commit crimes.

Singh: But you haven't vocal- like when you were in the police force, which I thought was admirable. You were vocal against Amadou Diallo, I think is how you pronounce his name. Which was a brave thing to do because what happened to him was []. But to the same end, if you think what ICE is doing right now, deporting guys with green cards and all that, I assume that would be ICE. You would also speak up against that ICE.

Mayor Adams: Well, our city, you know, this is some good stuff for your listeners. Our city is not allowed by law to collaborate with ICE for any civil enforcement. We can't do it. The law says that, you know. But the law allows us to collaborate for criminal enforcement. If somebody's committing a crime, we can collaborate with them.

We have joint task forces with the FBI, Homeland Security, all these entities that we collaborate with all the time to go after dangerous people, terrorists and other dangerous people. So we can't collaborate by law if it's just for civil enforcement.

Singh: So what do you think of what we're reading? I don't know what's real and what's not. It seems like students leading protests with green cards getting deported in your city. How do you feel about that?

Mayor Adams: And I want to go back to that question because that's important. Prior to the election, when I saw what happened on Columbia University and people were saying, you know, they are pro Hamas, they're lifting up Hamas. I am Hamas. When I heard people say that we should destroy America, all these leaflets on Columbia University and all of these protests who were there, some of them were not even students at Columbia University.

Prior to the election, I said, this is unacceptable. You know, my uncle died defending his country and I dare anybody to go on, desecrate our statues, desecrate our war memorial, destroy property. You know, that's not acceptable to me. So that tone didn't come after Trump was elected. I was saying this pre-election, that's not acceptable to me.

So those people who they rounded, they got for whatever reason, I don't know the evidence that they have. I don't know if it's just because they violated some rule, violated some law, handing out terrorist paraphernalia. Hamas is a terrorist organization. Hezbollah is a terrorist organization.

Singh: Gentle pushback, at the end. Respectful.

Mayor Adams: No, no. Do a hard pushback, man.

Singh: This is a resident of your city. He's at Columbia. So temporarily, he's a resident of your city. Wouldn't it be, wouldn't the onus be on you to look into what happened? Was it lawful? Was he breaking laws?

Mayor Adams: No.

[Laughter.]

Schulz: I'm going to take your green card. I'm going to take your citizenship. I'm going to take all that.

Singh: Birthright baby.

Mayor Adams: No, not at all. You feel "Death to America?" You know… What?

Singh: If he's saying all that, cool.

Mayor Adams: Yeah, we don't know the evidence. But listen, I want to be really clear, and I say this over and over again. A lot of people don't pick up and understand. I have no control over immigration. The federal government controls immigration.

Singh: Understood.

Mayor Adams: That's their responsibility. And, you know, I don't know who, Jay-Z said it best. I have 99 problems, brother, and immigration is not one. They deal with immigration. And so when you start to- I don't want them coming in, telling me how to run my city, and I don't want them dumping something on me like they're putting something on me. I don't want that. I don't want them dumping something on me like the previous administration did.

They had me deal with- We were getting sometimes 4,000 migrants a week. 8,000 every two weeks, do the math. And so I don't want to go in and start telling them how to do their job in immigration, and I don't want them telling me how to do my job.

Sinnett: Should legal immigrants be afraid to practice free speech in New York City?

Mayor Adams: I'm glad you said that. I'm glad you said that. Yeah, that's an important question. So many- when I'm moving around my immigrant communities, and they share with me, you know, "We're afraid. We're afraid to go to school, church, work, et cetera."

And why are they afraid? Because I've been saying the same thing. Go to school. Go to your house of worship. Go to the hospital. Call the police if you need help. The activists who love this hysteria are giving the impression that all of a sudden ICE is going into our schools, taking our children, going to a hospital. That's just not true. That's not true. They created this hysteria that you're seeing right now. That is not going on in this city.

[Commercial Break.]

Mayor Adams: We cannot ignore the Trump part of this. Because what Biden's Justice Department did was unbelievable. You place mothers on FBI watch lists because you are worried about what they're being taught to children in school.

Schulz: Wait, what is that?

Mayor Adams: They had mothers and families placed on FBI watch lists, terrorist watch lists because of their advocacy around some of the things that they're teaching their children in school. They call them terrorists. You've got to see what that Justice Department did. A lot of people want to ignore. They talk about my case but when Biden pardoned his son he said the Justice Department has been politicized.

[Crosstalk.]

Schulz: It is a tricky thing because I'm pardoning my kid 100 percent if I have that power, but at the same time I understand the frustration that you must absolutely feel.

Mayor Adams: We're not hearing… No one from the Justice Department quit. None of them said, "I think what you're doing is wrong so I'm quitting." I'm telling you, read Kash's book.

Schulz: The thing that I think is really frustrating is that we know your name, we know Biden's name, we know Hunter's name, we know Trump's name. These people that you were talking about or Kash was talking about, none of us know their names.

Mayor Adams: You will know their name in the books.

Schulz: I'm going to look because how can we hold people accountable that were not elected by us, not democratically chosen and are the ones allegedly behind these decisions, but how can we hold them accountable if we don't know who the [] they are? And why aren't you telling me? You know the names. Are you scared?

Singh: Dyslexia maybe?

Schulz: Audiobook, audiobook.

Mayor Adams: When you read the book I don't remember all the names as he listed, he did a good job of documenting some of the case history so I can't blurt out every name when I remember, but it's all in the book. He does an amazing job of documenting the case history. You look at the-

Schulz: Which case?

Mayor Adams: All the cases. There's a couple of cases. He goes into what was happening in the Justice Department under the previous administration and how the number of people who were under investigation was just political people. I mean the book is a good book.

Schulz: Do you get a nudge, like when you start speaking out do you get a private phone call from somebody or an email that goes, "Hey, why don't we go a different direction about this? It might not be good for you politically."

Mayor Adams: People told me when I criticized what was happening to our city around the migrants and the asylum seekers they said, "Eric, they got many ways to come at you."

Schulz: Is this common place within politics? Did you experience this as borough president when you had strong opinions? Were you like, "Hey, if you go against the administration, the mayoral administration, they might come down on you." Is this just how politics works or is this something specific to federal government and control?

Mayor Adams: I think it's a combination, people weaponize their authority in every business. It's not just unique to politics. It becomes more costly when you're using prosecutors as a weapon against political opponents. I'm facing 35 years in jail.

Singh: Wow. I didn't know. For some upgrades?

Mayor Adams: Think about it. And it cost me over $3 million.

Schulz: Personally?

Mayor Adams: Right.

Schulz: Hold on.

Mayor Adams: Think about this for a moment. This is real [].

Schulz: So these people would 100 percent be totally fine with you being behind bars for 35 years, completely broke, just so that they could send a message to other states not to push back?

Singh: And make an example.

Mayor Adams: Read Kash's book.

Schulz: Have you spoken about this outside of this podcast?

Mayor Adams: This is the most difficult moment for me for the last 15 months because everybody knows me as a fighter. Everybody knows this guy never stopped fighting. This guy was in the Police Department and he was criticizing the Police Department while he was in the Police Department.

Schulz: Police don't love that.

Mayor Adams: Everybody knows that I'm a fighter. My attorney has put me in a place, "You can't talk about the case Eric, because it's still going on, it's still pending." It has been hard as hell not to talk about the case because to watch my name being-

Schulz: Slandered like that.

Mayor Adams: You have people writing all sorts of, he did a quip pro quo, he's a criminal, he's corrupt and you have to sit back. My attorney said, Eric, he'll call me every morning. "Don't even think about it."

Schulz: Here's a question. If you're saying that this, or Kash is saying that these people exist in government, there's a permanent government as you will. By the way, I kind of understand that. The idea that the most powerful country in the history of the world could just change leadership completely every four or eight years is kind of insane. There needs to be something quote unquote permanent. I get maybe how it starts. I get the idea behind it.

But if the people are some nefarious characters, they could go left very quickly. Anyway. So, this thing exists, right? Kind of permanently. Now Trump is in power. There'll be another person in power. Are they able to influence that group? Or does that group just lay dormant while he's in power and wait for another administration? How does that work?

Mayor Adams: That's a great question. First of all, I think it was Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men, we said you really don't want to know the truth.

Singh: You can't handle the truth.

Mayor Adams: Right right. Running a country this complex comes with things that many of us don't want to know about. We need to be honest with ourselves.

Some of these operations, some of these secret operations that take place across countries. Just the complexities of ensuring and keeping us safe. When I came into office as the mayor, there were folks who were in agencies because agencies run cities. You know, the Department of [Transportation], Department of Sanitation, Police Department. That's what runs cities. There were people who were in agencies for 30, 40 years.

Schulz: Never been elected.

Mayor Adams: They make decisions that you don't even realize are being made. So a mayor comes in with his agenda. There's some things he can do, but there's others. If you're there for 30 years, you're like looking at them saying-

Schulz: Look at this []. Why are you telling me? Alright, go talk your []. And then you ultimately deal with the failures of those unelected officials. Now, if those unelected officials do something good, you do get the benefit of that.

Mayor Adams: So it's a win-win.

Schulz: But there are most circumstances I imagine if somebody knows they can't lose their job and they're looking out for their agency, they're trying to increase everybody's overtime. They're trying to make sure everybody gets paid more. And-

Mayor Adams: Layers and layers of bureaucracy. They've been there for so long. They know the people. Because remember, we have a $114 billion budget. You know the amount of money that is on the federal level?

So when they went in and looked at USAID and said, wait a minute, you're sending $3 billion to this? You're sending $3, $4 billion to this? And so those permanent people, and I know we want to believe in particularly the prosecutorial arm of our government. Because the worst thing we want to believe is that people are using the prosecutorial powers to go after people. That is frightening. And we have seen that. Like I said, imagine you are a mother-

Schulz: That's fascism, right? I mean, definitionally. Like if you're going after your political opponents and you're using the power of the government.

Mayor Adams: Imagine you're a mother in some small town somewhere and you truly believe in some of the governmental policies you disagree with. And you want to rally around that. Free speech. You want to organize around that. You should be on the FBI watch list?

Schulz: Yeah, you should have the ability to speak out. Which I guess goes more towards what Alex and Akaash were just saying before. Like we don't want to remove people's ability to speak out.

Mayor Adams: But that's who we are. That's who we are as a country.

Sinnett: Okay, I'm curious. We get frustrated because we look around and we see stuff not happening. And you just pointed out here's one reason why things can't happen. Sometimes there's people in place for long periods of time and it prevents you from doing something. Why don't you air them out? Why don't politicians air them out?

Mayor Adams: No, and you do. And you're able to remove those who are not have workers protection. I think you got a lot of laws to protect people. You can't just, you know, fire just to be fired.

Sinnett: They're not fired. But let's say, hey, I want to build this park right here. It's going to help the community. But this guy who's been in this job for 30 years wants this type of kickback in order to get the permit.

Schulz: Why don't we put a name and face to these bureaucratic kingpins?

Sinnett: We look at it as like, oh, nothing's getting done.

Singh: Oh, Eric Adams isn't doing anything.

Schulz: Because ultimately they're the consequences.

Mayor Adams: No, without a doubt. And we have been, in spite of the layers of bureaucracy and I want to be very clear. We have 320,000, I think the last time I checked, employees. And the overwhelming number of them get up every day and get their job done. They're committed. They're dedicated. I've been able to give them a great contract. They were not getting contracts that they deserved. Give them a good contracts. They're hardworking people.

But all you need are a few people in strategic places that can slow up the process. You have to identify them. You have to remove them when you can. You have to replace them with good people that you want. But the big thing that I want you to understand, that mayors come and go. Presidents come and go. Governors come and go. Permanent government is real. And whoever's trying to act like it's not real, they're lying.

Schulz: So just on that, dealing with the bureaucracy. And I think it's important that you said that there are like 300,000 government employees that make this city operate. It doesn't operate without them. We need them.

Mayor Adams: And they don't get caught up in the madness. You call 911, that ambulance, that cop is coming. You know that person on the other line? They're doing their job every day.

Schulz: And this is like an unbelievable task to run this city every single day. Anyway, so I have a lot of unbelievable amount of respect for them. And when I bring up DOGE, I don't want this to become politicized. Because I understand how people feel about Elon, and I understand how they feel about swaths of people getting fired and losing their ability to provide for their families. If that is exactly what's happening, I have empathy for those people as well. I think as a normal human being.

But is there a, let's say, more delicate way to go into some of the permanent government and make it more efficient, which would help everyday New Yorkers? Does that mean that there's more money for other programs? Those people need to get hired for those other programs as well. It's not like we're just going to cut jobs forever.

Mayor Adams: Right. Well said.

Schulz: Should we look into permanent government in every municipality and see if there's some blow?

Mayor Adams: Without a doubt. Without a doubt. Listen.

Schulz: How do you even say that without people going, oh, they're trying to DOGE this city now?

Mayor Adams: You gotta ignore the noise, brother. My claim to fame is that I know I love this city and I love the people in this city and I don't care what you call me. I don't care how much you yell at me. I don't care how you call names. You're not going to tell me that people should be sleeping on the streets and you can call me whatever you want. I'm not going to allow them to sleep on the street.

You're not going to tell me that we should have guns in our community. We took 20,800 guns off our streets. Almost 1,500 just this year alone. And we're seeing the results of that. And so you have to go into government not saying, okay, let me just say the right things. You have to go in being your honest, authentic self. And that's what we do every day. We're not going to solve all the problems. But you can't tell me we continue to spend this much money and then have 40 percent of our children reading and writing at grade level. All over the country.

Schulz: That's the thing. There just has to be a better way. That's why I hate that the DOGE thing has become so politicized because I think most Americans agree that we don't want there to be waste.

Mayor Adams: They do agree. And the thing is, I keep saying this, and people don't like it. They get upset. The Trump Derangement Syndrome is real. You can hate someone so much that even if they do something right, you know that? And you can like or dislike Elon, but you don't have any right blowing up someone's Tesla. You don't have any right. Who do you think you are?

Schulz: Right. Exactly.

Mayor Adams: You don't have any right going in and destroying...

Schulz: They drew a [] on his Tesla.

Singh: Yeah, I'm sorry about that by the way.

Gagnon: A white [] too.

Sinnett: A small white [].

Mayor Adams: But think about that.

Schulz: Now, to be fair-

Sinnett: They should get 40 years.

Schulz: But yeah, so that does happen.

Mayor Adams: That's the hypocrisy. When you say, okay, I'm upset that you are doing DOGE and closing down jobs. But you know what? You should close down Tesla. What about those people that work there?

Schulz: Dude, I literally said that. I was on this guy's podcast and I was like, listen, I totally understand you. Theo Von's podcast. I was like, I totally understand that people who are critical of Elon, there's reasons to be critical. Everybody should have the freedom to be critical. And I go, but hoping that Tesla shuts down.

Like, I understand you're upset that people lost jobs. It doesn't improve the situation if you make more people lose jobs. He's the richest guy in the world. He's going to be okay. He's not the one hurting the people that work there. So you're upset these people lost jobs. You're like, I know the solution. More people lose jobs.

Mayor Adams: Think about it. It's the irrational thought process that people are lining up. I just want to hurt each other. I want you to feel pain. And God forbid if you say I'm not playing that game, okay, then I'm going to cancel you. Cancel me.

[Commercial Break.]

Gagnon: I'm curious, what is your relationship like with Trump now? Do you guys correspond on a frequent basis?

Mayor Adams: When he first got elected, called the president, congratulations. New York is important to you. It's important to me. We got some issues that I need help with, like SALT. These are some of the taxes, I mean, some of the things that were passed.

Schulz: Salt?

Mayor Adams: It's called a SALT tax. It was hard on New York City. And we have communicated. I said, I was very transparent. I want to work with the president, not war with the president. You don't win warring. If there are things I disagree, I'm going to communicate and say, listen, we disagreed.

They took [$80 million] away from us, from FEMA funding for the migrants. We disagreed on that. But the goal is, how do we sit down, like I did with Biden? People forget that point, that I sat down and worked with the president. He came to the city around public safety issues. The president came in, we sat down, we met with the police commissioner. He did what I asked of him, to get a director to ATF. It was amazing.

So, I want to work with our national leaders. I'm the biggest, I'm the mayor of the biggest city in the country, in the most important country on the globe. How do we not work with the president? I mean, it's ridiculous.

Sinnett: How is it like going down to Mar-a-Lago? Are you guys like playing golf and kicking it? Or are you having like serious convo?

Mayor Adams: Everybody say Mar-a-Lago. It wasn't Mar-a-Lago. I think it was Palm Beach's other golf course. And we were having real conversations about the city. We were having conversations about what are the needs of the city. We have some real infrastructure problems that we have to face.

We're dealing with our BQE that's almost about to, we don't get it fixed, it could be a real safety issue. So, they're real, we had a lot of grants that we were getting for our infrastructure stuff. And so, I was really saying, I want to revitalize the economy. I want to put a chip plant up in the Bronx, where we can make the chips and not be held hostage by Taiwan and others.

We can build a whole and build our jobs, teach people the technology. So, I was sharing with him, it was a, hey, I'm the mayor. I want to let you know I'm the mayor of the city you live in. And we want to make sure that the city continues to grow. Now, they critiqued me speaking with them. The governor went several times to see him. Other governors are saying...

Schulz: White woman privilege. But to that point, I think a lot of times we focus on...

Mayor Adams: That's some crazy [].

Schulz: It is. It is, isn't it? Don't go bird watching in Central Park. So, there's this thing that I think a lot of times happens where it's like... And I'm glad you just said that last part. Because a lot of times it happens with cities, especially major cities, like a New York City, a Los Angeles, San Francisco, where the focus so often is about plugging leaks in the boat that we don't think about how to make the boat even bigger. And Americans, we love bigger. We love abundance. Especially New Yorkers. All of our families came here for more.

So, we don't just want the boat plugged. When you say I want to build a chip plant in the Bronx, I'm like, yeah, that's what I want too. And I think an important thing for all New Yorkers, because you could affect New York City, is one, like financial literacy. I was talking to the guys on the All In podcast, but specifically, how do we include people like me who grew up with no financial knowledge whatsoever? How do we include them in the most powerful driving force in New York City, which is the stock market?

How do we get young kids like me who went to public school, like Al, who went to public school, how do we get financial literacy at a point, and maybe even like an injection of capital? Like, is there a fund? It could be $5, $1,000 for every kid born in New York City that's invested in the S&P 500 so that they start, one, feeling like part of the success of this engine that runs New York City. Well, also in America, but like I want to set the precedent in my city first and then the rest of America can go. I'd like to.

Mayor Adams: First, you're right. We're the economic engine of the state and the country. And so what we're doing, my commissioner of DCWP, commissioner of Worker Protection, we're now connecting and partnering with banks in every school. We're teaching our young people how to open up bank accounts, how to open up checking accounts, savings accounts. We're going to dive into the stock exchange, financial literacy.

Because the greatest impact on your life is your personality and your finances. If you're not, you could be academically smart, but if you're not emotionally intelligent, you're going nowhere. And if you don't know how to manage your finance, and by the time you get out of school, you're in debt, credit card debt, you're wearing all of your wealth on your pocket book or your shoes or your clothing. And so we're going to teach our children how to manage money.

What we're doing in our educational system, we've put so much attention on your ABCs. We did not put enough attention on developing the full personality of our children. We're teaching them meditation, breathing exercises, yoga. We're teaching them financial literacy. We're changing the food in our schools to show them how to have healthy food.

So we're giving them those foundational issues so no matter where they go, they could prosper. You guys are successful because of your ability to connect with people. If you don't know how to connect with people, you don't know how to communicate with people. And if you don't know how to manage your money, you could... How many athletes, ballplayers, etc. makes a ton of money, and then a couple of years after they had it again, they don't have... Nobody told them how to manage their money.

Singh: And when you don't have, my parents had money then lost money, and I remember when I didn't have money, all I thought about was buying X, Y, and Z when I got money. People who have money and grow up comfortable, they don't need these things. They're not thinking about what they don't have all the time. But when you get it and you have it, I'm buying everything.

Schulz: I just want New Yorkers to feel like a part of the success of the city. When I was young, it was easy because we had sports teams that were successful. So when the Yankees won, I won. But if the stock market is soaring, I want to feel like now maybe, because at 35 I [] finally bought a stock. I'm 41 now.

I want everybody, when they see the stock market soaring and they see these businesses that are like, many of them centered in New York City, these CEOs walking around New York City, I want those people that are running those companies, hopefully they're doing a good job and they care about people. I want them to look up to them and be like wow, part of my financial success in the future is due to that person and I want them to have some admiration instead of looking at them going they're getting rich and they're leaving me behind.

We can't leave people behind, especially in New York City. If every other city wants to do that [], that's fine, but we should be a beacon of hope for the rest of the country. This is how you take care of your citizens and I want to get back to that point where it's like, we had a cockiness, bro, that like is deserved. It's the greatest city in history.

Sinnett: We still got it.

Schulz: Some of us still got it. But some states feel like they could even have a conversation, they could be critical of New York and I'm like, what is wrong with these people? Like, I've been to your state.

Mayor Adams: Right, right. And that's what that's what and I'm feeling what you're saying and when I became mayor and said that, you know, we have swagger. We're New York. You know what I'm saying?

And we were so used to not feeling the greatness of being in New York. No matter where I go, man, people argue about who's number two, who's number three. They look at me and smile. We stopped feeling as though we're number one.

Schulz: I think COVID hit the city in a big way. I think that we're coming out of it and we're recovering and it is a monumental task that you have, but like, I think it's really important as we plug those holes in the ship, like how big can this [] ship get?

Mayor Adams: And we can't leave anyone behind. So that's why we're going to start teaching our children blockchain. We're going to start teaching them cryptocurrency. We're going to start teaching them AI on a ground level. These are all new industries and if we start nurturing our babies while they're in second, third grade, they're going to grow up in these industries.

We want to teach them game making, not only playing the game, but how to become an entrepreneur.

Schulz: Writing code and [].

Mayor Adams: Right, to write code. So that's the goal is many people thought they weren't deserving. We kept our young people in parts of the city in survival mode. You know, Maslow's hierarchy of need, food, shelter, clothing. Don't worry about self-actualization. We're just going to keep you down here. Just be happy that you know, survival mode. No, you got to take people out of survival mode and take them. You want to get to the point of that self-actualization.

Gagnon: How long do you have to live here to be considered a New Yorker?

Mayor Adams: I don't think being a New Yorker is based on time. I think it's based on attitude. You know, It's not yours. You might not have attitude.

Schulz: You might not have the attitude. So what makes someone a New Yorker?

Mayor Adams: First of all, when you feel comfortable throughout the entire city, no matter where you are, you know, you will have folks who will move into a community and then all of a sudden complain about, what's that loud noise coming from that building? It's a church. They do that.

So if you come in with your own attitude instead of saying, I want to incorporate into the city, I want to bring something in the city, because the diversity of this city is amazing. That's one of the joys of being, not only when I was the borough president, but being the mayor. I mean, you can go and sit in a sukkah during a Jewish holiday, Diwali, and one day you can go to a Ramadan celebration. You could go to an Easter celebration. You could just, you know, all these parades. I love all these parades.

Schulz: And it's real diversity. It's not like in California where there's a lot of diversity, but everybody lives in their own enclave. You gotta pass through somebody's neighborhood, whether you like it or not. Little Italy and Chinatown bleed into one another, so we gotta be around each other, and it's a very unique experience.

Mayor Adams: It is. And I don't think, I think it's a tragedy that people don't appreciate and enjoy the power of the diversity. Our educational process is not only the sterilized environment of a classroom, but it is in the community, the streets. If you take your children around and have them be part of their education, it's learning from different communities, your children will grow up and adapt. Because boardrooms now can no longer, everybody can't look like each other, talk like each other, eat the same food.

Sinnett: Such a huge advantage.

Mayor Adams: Diversity is crucial.

Sinnett: How would the dismantling of the DOE affect New York City?

Mayor Adams: It's a good question. We don't know. That's a great question. We don't know the answer yet, but I would challenge you and your listeners to go across the country and look at the reading and writing and math results of all of these cities. Man, you got places where people are like 30 percent reaching academic standard. Something is wrong.

Schulz: There's a perfect example where it's just like, remember when Rikers, remember the horrible situation that happened at Rikers and people were like, we got to shut down Rikers. I don't even know what your position was on that. I'm like, Rikers isn't the issue. Rikers is a building made out of concrete with bars, right?

It's like, how that is maybe run is an issue that you could change. But maybe that's the thing that's part of education. It's like, if we're looking at the numbers and they aren't to where they need to be, you got to do something. Not take away the whole thing, but if you don't believe in some change, then you're just politicizing an issue that's going to end up hurting kids in their education.

Mayor Adams: And especially when you are spending such a high number per student. When do you get a return on your investment? So let's switch to Rikers for a moment. I got rebaptized on Rikers with the inmates. I went up with the inmates last year.

Schulz: So can you explain Rikers to the people not from New York that are watching?

Mayor Adams: Yeah, Rikers Island is the New York City's jail.

Schulz: It's where men go to find their sexuality.

[Crosstalk.]

Mayor Adams: This is a perfect example of fantasy colliding with reality. And that's what a lot of people who would like this job, you know, you know, idealism collides with realism. So last administration, they made the decision. Rikers is our jail system. They made a decision that they need to close Rikers. And we had a little over 3,000 people that were there.

They want to close Rikers down and build four more jails, one in each borough, except for Staten Island. 51 percent of Rikers population, they have a mental health issue. 20 percent have severe mental health. What I'm saying to them that the four more jails that they want to build, it was going to cost us $8 billion. Now it doubled. $16 billion to build it. What I'm saying to them, instead of building four more jails that can't hold the prison population, because the four more jails are going to hold about 3,600 people. We have about 7,000 people there right now.

Schulz: So you're building four more jails… keep going.

Mayor Adams: Right. So what I say to them, instead of building four more jails that can't hold the prison population, why don't we take one of those jails and build a state of the art psychiatric facility so we don't criminalize people who are dealing with psychiatric disorder.

We give them the support that they need and take care of them. But people are caught on the romanticism of we close Rikers.

Schulz: Because they think that it will do something. It's like it's not solving your problem.

Mayor Adams: Brother, you got 7,100 people. And so I ask them, well what are you going to do with the other 7,100? Why can't you just let them go? You know what you got to do to go to Rikers nowadays?

Schulz: So okay. So you become mayor, right? Do you know what happened with Epstein? Can you figure out what happened? Because it happened in the tombs, right?

Mayor Adams: No, no, no. He was in federal prison.

Schulz: Oh. What's the tombs? Thats around here?

Mayor Adams: The tombs are downtown in lower Manhattan.

Schulz: But that's just like a weekend jail cell.

Mayor Adams: It's a jail also. Any jail is bad. Nobody wants to put people in jail.

Schulz: Fair, fair. But he was at federal so you wouldn't have any jurisdiction.

Sinnett: FCC, right? It's like right next to it?

Mayor Adams: The president is talking about releasing the Epstein information.

Schulz: They ain't never going to release that. We're never going to know about JFK. They just keep on saying that [].

Okay, but is there ever a part of you that like when you become mayor do you go, yo, tell me who did it or tell me what happened? Can you ask those questions?

Mayor Adams: You always try to seek information. But if they release, as Obama said, if you say it, they got to kill you.

Schulz: Oh wait, so do you know?

Mayor Adams: No, no, no, I have no idea.

Gagnon: The cameras malfunction, the guards fell asleep, there's nothing else you need to know. That's all you need to know.

Schulz: Nobody said we got to get rid of that jail. That is just Rikers. Okay, and then what's the guy from the crypto guy, what's his name? Sam Bankman, he's also in federal? So this is just a federal holding house that you don't have any jurisdiction over?

Mayor Adams: The federal is a different system. You have federal jurisdictions and you have state, you have city. If you're in Rikers, you're either waiting for trials...

Schulz: Or you're going upstate.

Mayor Adams: Right, exactly, so it's a different system.

Sinnett: Where's Luigi Mangione being held? Is he federal?

Mayor Adams: Federal picked that up also.

Singh: Sorry, did I hear? I think Joy was telling me, right before they said they're seeking the death penalty for Luigi?

Mayor Adams: That's what the federal government is doing. We don't make that call, the federal government, to intentionally assassinate someone. I don't even remember any time in my law enforcement history back then of someone using a silencer, he intentionally sought out the CEO and assassinated him.

Schulz: So back when you were in law enforcement, did you ever have any run-ins with the Supreme Team? Or G-Unit?

Mayor Adams: You ever see the Supreme Team video?

Schulz: Which one? With you?

Mayor Adams: There's a video, yeah.

Schulz: Because you hear about these iconic gangs... I grew up...

Mayor Adams: Those guys were larger than life, man.

Schulz: So what was it... Can you explain, obviously without putting yourself in any kind of position, but can you explain... What was folklore? We hear them through rap stories... Folklore was real, man. It was... Was it complete control of the neighborhood?

Mayor Adams: Crack just... Cocaine and crack just came online back then. You know, Kilo, Tinka, those whole teams. These guys used to drive around with Rolls Royces and NYCHA, and they just had a real lock on the drug scene in the city. Then rap started to come around.

Schulz: So they're telling the stories.

Mayor Adams: Right, right, right.

Schulz: And then when you were in law enforcement, was law enforcement scared of them? Did they pose a threat to law enforcement? Did they try to work with law enforcement? How did law enforcement even go about handling a violent...

Mayor Adams: And you know what was interesting? The level of violence was not the same as you saw during the 80s. Going through the 80s and 90s. Back then, those guys were about making their money. They would have a beef.

And then the inner gang, once that started happening... Yeah, right. 80s is when you really saw the violence, because there was just so much money. It was a lot of money on the street. People wanted to take over areas, take over streets. But back during... When you look around 75, coming to the 80s, crack started to really start to make his way. And really, crack really escalated to violence when you started dealing with crack cocaine.

Schulz: Because of profitability?

Mayor Adams: Profit... For whatever reason, even heroin wasn't... It didn't bring that level of violence. Going into the 60s.

Gagnon: The cost per kilo also. You can get a lot of money. Like 20 grand for a key. It's odorless. It can transport easily.

Mayor Adams: You had those who were participating in law enforcement that was part of making that money also. There was some illegal stuff that was going on.

Schulz: So they were corrupting police officers?

Mayor Adams: Yeah, 7-7 [inaudible] boys.

Schulz: This is the Brooklyn guys, right?

Mayor Adams: Yeah, 7-7 precinct. Yeah, you had the Dirty 30. Because guys were seeing so much money being made on the street.

Schulz: There is something I've thought about, which is like, you cannot... When you bestow responsibility on somebody, you cannot underpay them to a point where they're corruptible.

Mayor Adams: Well said.

Schulz: Now, I'm not saying you have to pay every single politician, every single police officer a million dollars or whatever it is, but they can't be living below the poverty line or at it because it would be too enticing. They have so much power. It would be too enticing not to do that.

Mayor Adams: And you do these jobs because you believe in the job, but at the same time, you should always compensate people to take care of their family. And even the Mollen Commission and others did their review over some of the actions. They said it's important to pay a law enforcement officer.

Singh: Yeah, I would think the highest paid profession should be cops, teachers, doctors. These are positions you want the best people going to. And if I'm a cop making great money, the idea that I might mess around and do some corrupt stuff or treat somebody badly and it might cost me this job that pays me well, I don't think it's worth it. You're going to weed a lot of them out.

Mayor Adams: And even teachers, you know, you go someplace like Korea, teachers are held to an extreme high level of respect. Here, we gave our teachers great contracts, we gave our cops great contracts, but you're right. You should make sure that they're receiving the suitable pay that they deserve. That's what it comes down to.

Schulz: Can you still give out keys to the city?

Mayor Adams: Yes. We didn't give you a key yet?

Sinnett: Now we're talking.

Schulz: I would never ask for something like that. I was just wondering if there were some keys around. I would never ask for something like that.

Singh: I just want a rent-controlled apartment. Forget the key. You want a key to the apartment. Rent-controlled apartment. But this man deserves a key to the city. Nobody rides for New York harder than this guy and this guy.

Schulz: Okay, quick, couple quick New York questions. Which borough has the most attractive women?

Mayor Adams: I think all of them have great shorties.

Schulz: Good political answer.

Mayor Adams: When I, you know, you say, you know how many times you go viral? I drive my team crazy.

Schulz: I bet. She's writing notes right now. Kate's going crazy right now. Don't give him a mic. No, we just locked up the next mayoral election, so don't even worry about it.

Sinnett: But it is Queens, though.

Schulz: You're tripping, you're tripping. Maybe the best strip clubs. Okay, okay, okay.

Mayor Adams: We need an E11EVEN in New York. You know what I'm saying? We need an E11EVEN in New York.

Schulz: Why don't we have an E11EVEN in New York?

Mayor Adams: I spoke to some folks. We may be rolling it out in New York.

Schulz: Think of all the things we gave Miami. We gave them Carbone, we gave them so many places. They can't give us one little E11EVEN real quick? A nice nightclub where you don't have to feel like a scumbag in a strip club but there's strippers there.

Gagnon: They happen to go for some reason.

Schulz: But it's a great coincidence.

[Crosstalk.]

Mayor Adams: I've never been to E11EVEN.

Schulz: Of course. No we're going to work on that.

Sinnett: Why do places have to close at 4?

Mayor Adams: We need a 24-hour district and these community boards.

Gagnon: A 24-hour district, with red lights.

Sinnett: No, we do not need that.

Schulz: New Yorkers, go to sleep.

Sinnett: Because then you have illegal after parties and you don't want that. Not that I've ever been to those. You've never been to E11EVEN.

Schulz: Out of nowhere. Unprompted. We need an E11EVEN. [Inaudible.] You want to make New York City abundant. That's one of the problems we've got to solve. It's crazy. It's a disaster we don't have an E11EVEN.

Mayor Adams: It is, brother.

Schulz: I know that other guy running for mayor wouldn't make an E11EVEN.

Mayor Adams: Heck no.

Schulz: Would never dream of it. That old cornball, that other guy. With a nipple piercing. He'd be dancing on the pole. How are you going to have a nipple piercing and run for mayor of New York City? That's insane.

Singh: Queens, maybe.

Schulz: Listen, I didn't say who it is so we don't even know who it is. But that other guy, right? I can't believe it. He's wearing white shirts, he's wearing a blouse with a nipple ring saying he's going to run for mayor. This guy's got to be crazy. Against Adams.

Singh: You really want to make New York great, legalize sex work. Small business owners.

Schulz: Let's not get too crazy.

Singh: I think it's the move.

Schulz: Here's one final question. So Canal Street has now become like an open air bazaar. When I was growing up… it's a souk. You could get the fake bags but there was like a little I got my Playstation hack so I could play the fake video games and [] but you had to go down into one of the underground malls and it was a kind of nice undercover thing and sometimes I asked the cops that were on the corner I was like, yo, what do you do about this? And he was like, listen bro, we can lock them up and then they're out in a few days they've kind of, unfortunately, were kind of like clipped and aren't going to do anything. What do we do about a circumstance like that?

Mayor Adams: You know, and Deputy Mayor Kaz Daughtry he has done a great job. What we've done, we've gone after the mother load and gone after some of the warehouses. So if you go and just round up who's on Canal so we've hit a couple of locations.

If you were to go online you'd see we've taken millions of dollars in supplies. We're still doing investigations. We want to go after the speed of them. If not, you're just really you're not even locking the person up. You're confiscating the property.

Schulz: This is important information to get out to the people because I remember seeing it every single day and I think I think two things. I would think that the average person walking around here feels that the police do not have authority. I think New Yorkers, we don't want to feel like that. We don't like to be told what to do but we still like to know that the police can handle some []. But also it feels like is the city doing anything to stop this? The fact that you're going after the mother load.

Mayor Adams: That's the goal. We've done a number of sweeps. So now we've hit several warehouses and we're now zeroing in. That's the same thing we did with the illegal cannabis shops. We started going after the mother loads and we closed down I think about 1,600 of them. The illegal cannabis shops are making money now. So we want to go after those mother loads and get it to close down.

Sinnett: Why not just increase the presence of police on Canal? Just have a bunch of police always stationed on Canal.

Mayor Adams: And we do. Because they do that in the hood. The precinct is there but you don't want those guys going after one after the other during the confiscation when you have some heavy crime that's taking place.

Sinnett: But if they knew there was a cop right there on the corner, they're not even going to set up.

Mayor Adams: But now they do. They're there. They know if you confiscate the merchandise, they're going to go right back and get a new shipment of it and just be back out there.

Schulz: But there maybe is a point to that. If you confiscate every single day for six months, eventually they just start going.

Mayor Adams: That's some serious manpower.

Schulz: That's another thing. And also two guys go confiscate one person then everybody else on the block is like, we're good. You would have to have a hundred cops confiscate the two hundred people that are throughout Canal selling things.

Mayor Adams: You can't throw up your hands. The complexity of solving the problem is not an answer. There's several investigations that are underway now of going after the large shipments.

Schulz: What is the best bodega [] pill?

Mayor Adams: If I answer that, I'll be on the front page of the [inaudible].

Schulz: Any other questions before Mayor Adams gets out here? About to be second term Mayor Adams.

Sinnett: You are definitely running. As a Democrat?

Mayor Adams: I'm running 100 percent as a Democrat. It breaks my heart that New York has had to go through these last 15 months. What I wanted to do to New Yorkers is to let them know that no matter what I was going through, I was going to stand tall and fight for the city. And I also wanted to send a symbol because everybody's going through something.

We sit here and we talk and we laugh but I know if you go into the crevices of your mind there's something in your life that you're wrestling with. It could be a health issue, it could be a family member, etc. And I wanted them to say, listen look at all that this guy's going through and he's still getting up every day and he's delivering for us, he's building the houses, keeping our city safe. And I'm hoping that they would draw on it when they're dealing with their experience.

Saturday, man, it broke my heart I had to go on Ocean Parkway and the mother and the two children were killed in an accident. Then I had to sit in that room with the dad and talk with him. I do that so often and I got to tell people that, hey, you know what, you're going to get through this.

I can't say that if I'm jumping ship when I'm going through something personally. I want to show New Yorkers the grit and grind of those who grew up here. We're grit and grind. We fight, we never surrender, never give up. I'm hoping your listeners, go look at our record, man.

Schulz: I think you guys can do… I think that there is a version, now with social media, of posting the accomplishments. I think it's something that the Trump administration, and Trump specifically because he's so entertainment minded, any kind of win, even if it's not a win, anything that they're doing, they're letting you know they're doing it. I don't know if we're taking Greenland, but sending J.D. Vance to walk around, it's a lot of marketing.

I think there's a version where it's like, you even saying that about Canal Street makes me feel like, oh, at least this is being thought about, at least they're trying to do something. I think there's a version where maybe it's through social media or whatever it is, but it's not through you doing a conference every single day. There's other things you can do with your time.

But I think disseminating that information to New Yorkers, one, gets us excited about a chip plan in the Bronx, but two, makes us feel seen when we go, hey, the price of this is expensive and you're like, we're the richest city in the world, maybe we gotta subsidize eggs. But no kid in New York City should not be able to afford an egg when they're, you know, in New York City. Give us that information.

Mayor Adams: That's how big... If I had to say one thing where we failed at, we failed to get our success out. And our biggest failure on that is that what I've learned is that if Colgate had to depend on the tabloids to tell their success, they would never be in business. We had to depend on traditional tabloids to tell our success.

Schulz: Right, the word of mouth is what is more popular. The tabloids were not going to be in your favor.

Mayor Adams: Heck no. You know?

Schulz: But you don't need them anymore.

Mayor Adams: Someone shared with me the other day that was very interesting, that they are, people forget that they are their business, they're in the business to make money. And if it bleeds, it leads. You know, so it's talking about we're building a chip plant in the Bronx.

Schulz: It's like, nobody cares. But we New Yorkers do.

Mayor Adams: I'm the most clickable mayor in the history of New York. I said, I made y'all, I made y'all career.

Schulz: Exactly, you paid their rent. No, for real. For real.

Mayor Adams: They sit around all day. I told them, go back when I first got elected. I told them, I said, let me tell you all something. You are going to have so much fun with me being mayor. All of your careers are going to be made because of me. No one knew who you were.

Schulz: Well listen, we're very excited, and I appreciate you coming on. I also appreciate you, like, I like the fact that you wanted to have that contentious conversation. I think that's good, and I think that's important, and I think it's something that New Yorkers, I think we identify as. It's like, we're not afraid of having a tough conversation.

I'm glad that you addressed a lot of the, I don't know, controversy and stuff going on, and then cleaned it up. And if there are things that you guys need help with in terms of disseminating information to the city, not on behalf of you or your organization, but on behalf of what the city is accomplishing, let us know. We would love to make short videos.

Singh: This guy really cares about the PR of New York. I'm ready to move. This guy really cares.

Mayor Adams: No, it's a good product. And listen, brother, man, God has been good to me, man. You go from being called a dumb student in school, you get arrested as a child, beat by police officers, go on to become a police officer, a captain, becoming a lawmaker.

Mommy, before she transitioned, she saw a baby go from breaking the law to enforcing the law, and I went to Albany to write the law, and now I'm the mayor of the most important city on the globe. I don't have any right to complain at all.

Schulz: Amen. Eric Adams.

Sinnett: What about the White House?

Schulz: For next podcast. Mayor Adams, everybody.