Transcript: Mayor Adams Calls In for Live Interview on 1010 Wins’ “The PM Rush”

October 25, 2024

Larry Mullins: A lot of things going on in and around our fair city, but one thing which has been drawing a lot of attention lately is New York City Hall, where you are aware of the investigations and the departures of key city department heads, and no one can best answer what's going on in our city, and whether or not we are okay than the mayor himself. And with that, we are joined by his honor, the Honorable Mayor Eric Adams. How are you this evening, sir?

Mayor Eric Adams: Quite well. Quite well. Good to speak with you. You know, this is New York. There's always a lot going on. If it wasn't, we'd be some small town somewhere in Hicksville.

Mullins: Yes, sir. Indeed. Indeed. Mayor, let's jump right into it in the interest of time. Keeping it real, you've talked with me before. There's something I've been wanting to ask you for a minute. And that is, given all that we've seen with former President Trump, many of the people in his orbit have been subpoenaed or investigated, and eventually he was indicted and then convicted and currently awaiting sentencing. Given the climate that we're in, Mayor Adams, and seeing a similar dynamic so far, sir, do you have any concern whatsoever that the same thing could be happening here with you? Yes or no and why?

Mayor Adams: Well, first of all, no one wants to go through any sort of federal inquiry. No one. No New Yorker. But the goal, as I have always stated, I did nothing wrong, and the facts are going to show that. I have an attorney that's handling that, and I'm going to let him do his job as I continue to do my job. And, you know, we could get tied up in that dialogue over and over again, but I have to continue to do what I've been doing and that's produce for New Yorkers.

Mullins: Okay. Mayor, let me ask you this, you and I. You've probably done this already, but I have to ask. Can you think of anything at all that you might have done with perfectly good intentions, which in hindsight could have been or misunderstood or misconstrued as a crime?

Mayor Adams: Well, hindsight is 20-20. Anyone say that? You said between you and I- no, it's not you and I, it's millions of New Yorkers [that] listen to 1010. You know, hindsight is always 20-20. But I really encourage New Yorkers to read the indictment. Read it. Don't just do the presentation that came from the Southern District. Read it and see for yourself, the normal constituent service I provide to New Yorkers, and [what] every elected provide[s], is what we need to focus on. And the attorney is going to present that case, and I'm going to let him do his job.

Mullins: Okay. Finally on that, then I'll leave it alone. What about these departures of staff? I know you've said you have a pretty deep vent for replacing all these folks. How does it make you feel personally to see everybody pretty much jump ship after you hand-selected them all in good faith? And is it even worth it, Mayor Adams, to run for office again? And will you?

Mayor Adams: Well, why would you say jump ship? People serve their time in their particular place, and they want to go do other things with their lives. And I just don't understand why we want to negatively review or view people who have been great public servants for two years and 10 months, for the most part.

And when you speak to them, their family takes a toll. This is a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week job. COVID, 220,000 migrants and asylum seekers, driving down crime, producing jobs, doing housing. It takes a toll on you. And when you look at it, after they, as the chancellor stated, he said, hey, Eric, I ran out of gas. I mean, that happens in this business.

Mullins: Well, let me retract. Jump ship probably wasn't the best phrasing. But I mean, we're talking a lot of folks now. We're talking about damn near the whole cabinet, if you will. Come on, all at the same time?

Mayor Adams: No, go back. Let's- and that's why it's important to have this dialogue that we're doing, because sensationalism is not being truthful. The cabinet's not going. We have 10,000 city employees. But if you break it down just to my discretionary appointments, from all my commissioners to all of my chiefs of top hierarchy of the office, all of my deputy mayors are still here, outside of the first deputy mayor. When you look at… the first deputy mayor and deputy mayor of public safety, so it's not the top leadership of my administration. That is just not the reality. They're still here. And most importantly, they're still producing for New Yorkers.

Mullins: Okay. And you are still pressing onward. I've been following obviously all of the things that you've been doing, despite all that's been taking place. Let's talk about the City of Yes now and explain how that's supposed to work and how optimistic are you that we can pull this off?

Mayor Adams: The most important number that I know, 1.4 percent vacancy rate, almost functionally zero for affordable housing. We have a city with 59 community boards, and out of those 59 community boards, 10, they have produced more housing than the other 49 combined.

That's unfair. Every part of the city should build a little more housing, access to good schools, good food, good hospital care, good transportation. We all have to produce more housing. We have an inventory problem. Now the City Council is looking at it. We testified, we heard from the public, over 70 percent of the public state[d] that this is a good initiative. We got to build more housing and increase our inventory.

Mullins: Okay. One final note before we get to something a little bit on the lighter side. We heard some flack this week about the pilot program using scanners, that is to detect guns in the subways. It didn't detect anything, but notwithstanding the false positive, wasn't that the whole idea mayor to deter gun activity? They didn't find any guns. Wasn't that it?

Mayor Adams: Think about this for a moment and how it was shown that we did, how do we know we didn't deter? We didn't find any guns and we found knives and think about the false positives that you're talking about.

When you have thousands of New York is going through the system and out of those thousands of New York is, are you, you are able to only have 118 false positives. I mean, come on. Are we kidding me? This is the New York is don't want guns on their system and whatever technology we can use to prevent it, we're going to do so.

And so I would take those 118 false positive[s]. I go to the airport, they had me go through the scanner again because they picked up something that wasn't actually there. False positives is part of anything that man creates. Thousand went through 118 false positive[s]. We found 12 knives and other weapons on the system. I call that a victory, we deterred. No shootings at those stations that we had [the] device there.

Mullins: Okay. Finally. And speaking of victories, how about those Yankees? They're going to pull this off. What are you calling it? How do you call it?

Mayor Adams: Yankees and Liberty, you know, first of all, I said, I wanted us to get a ring of before this was over, and we did with the Liberty, so excited from the WNBA and Liberty. And now we're moving on to two in one year. And you know, we cannot dismiss how great the Mets played as well. They put their heart and soul into it.

And now the Yankees [are] going to finish the task. I made a bet with the Los Angeles mayor, Mayor Bass, my good friend today, one of us is going to going to have to wear the Jersey if one team wins. So I told her to get ready to wear the New York City Yankees jersey, because we're going to win this.

Mullins: Alright. Mayor Eric Adams, you're always up front with me, sir. I appreciate you answering my questions and you're always welcome here. I appreciate you.

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