Transcript: Mayor Adams Calls in Live to 77 WABC's "Sid & Friends"

March 30, 2023

Sid Rosenberg: Always an honor to have this next guest on my radio show. Become a very good friend of mine, very good friend. He is the mayor of New York City and he's stopping by on a special day, Opening Day here in New York. It is Mayor Eric Adams. Eric, good morning pal. Happy Opening Day. How are you?

Mayor Eric Adams: Good. You picked a great song to play, man, Eric Clapton. A lot of people don't realize how great his music is and will probably continue to be. Happy Opening Day. The Boys of Summer, they're back.

Rosenberg: They are back and actually started today's show, Eric, at 6:00 am with Don Henley, Boys of Summer, which is a great song too. But the Mets are in Miami, they don't come back until April the 6th. But the Yankees, they're in the Bronx this afternoon, 1:00 start, hosting the San Francisco Giants and you talk a lot about spirit, Eric, Mr. Mayor, and you talk about the spirit of New York. So it's a two-part question here. The Mets and Yankees returning to regular season baseball, what does that mean for this city in both spirit and quite frankly, money?

Mayor Adams: I think that sometimes we fail to understand how sports is really connected to the spirit of the city. You remember during 9/11, I'll never forget that home run that was hit by Mike Piazza.

Rosenberg: Yes, yes.

Mayor Adams: And how it really just let us know that we will come back no matter what happens. The city is resilient, not because of the tall buildings, not because of the wide streets, but it's resilient because of the people. New Yorkers are special people. You know what? It's a privilege to be a New Yorker, and I think that baseball and even basketball and other sports, the Rangers, it's all part of boosting one's spirit. And it not only boosters your spirit, there's economic value to it. Every time there is a championship game or leading up to the playoffs, there's a real economic boost around tourism and it really helps our economy. So there's a real, just a due benefit of having good sports teams and how they help the city.

Rosenberg: You know what's funny too, Mr. Mayor, is I love what you said about baseball just now, but you and I have had so many conversations about your personality. And we go out for dinner, you and I, and we talk about a lot of stuff. The city, some of the issues, what you feel, what I feel, and one of the folks that spent most of his life living in this city and has since relocated to Florida, is the man running once again for president, Donald Trump. And look, you're on record, you like Joe Biden, you have favorably compared yourself to Joe Biden. And I said to somebody, Mr. Mayor, a couple days ago, I said, "You know what's funny about Eric?" I said, "He is Trump. He is almost exactly... He's not going to want to hear this because again, he compares himself to Biden, blah, blah, blah. But he is so much like Donald Trump. He doesn't realize it, but I do." Has anybody else told you that you are a Democrat, you like Biden, but the truth is, in a lot of ways, you do have a lot of Trump in you. Anybody ever tell you that?

Mayor Adams: Nah, I'm a blue collar guy, brother. And I think what's great about, as you said, oftentimes we sit down, we'll have dinner, we communicate, is that people don't know how much they miss by having people in their lives that don't think the same things that they do. We have lost the ability in the city and country to engage in good, healthy dialogue. Everyone is embarrassed to engage in good, healthy dialogue.

I love talking about why I like Biden, why I believe I'm a blue collar mayor. Just as you love talking about why you like Trump. This is who we are, and when you don't have that, if all I do is sit in a room with people who like what I like, I'm never going to grow. I'm never going to see two sides of an issue. I'm just going to be living in an echo chamber. So I'm a blue collar guy. I like Biden because he's a blue collar guy. A guy who took the train to Washington, D.C., the guy had some major hurdles in his life he had to overcome. I think about my hurdles of being arrested, being dyslexic, living on the verge of homelessness. I just see in him what I see in the life that I had to live and the hurdles I had to overcome, like all of us. I'm sure you have some stories of what you had to overcome.

Rosenberg: Oh God, got a few. But I will say this, some of the obstacles you have to overcome now kind of put in your way that you didn't put here, like the migrant situation, which is a huge issue for New York, especially from an economic standpoint. That's a Biden deal. So listen, if you like Biden, God bless you. If you think he's a blue collar guy, man, he lives in a $9 million house and all those things, I'm not sure what's blue collar about that. But the truth is, one of the things that really plagues this city, Mr. Mayor, this migrant crisis comes straight from him. He's the guy that is completely okay with open borders. And now of course, that mayors like you and other governors have to deal with it on a daily basis. Now all of a sudden he ain't talking so much. But the truth is, you are dealing with this headache because of the guy that you pretend to like.

Mayor Adams: Well, and there's a duel response to that, because yes, he's the president. The president must take the ultimate responsibility of whenever there's a crisis of this magnitude, there should be a national solution to it. And I have not seen what I needed from the White House around this issue. But also we have to be honest about the failure of getting real comprehensive immigration reform. That's the heart of this. And we've been going back and forth on this issue for so many years, and we have to finally deal with immigration reform. How are we going to handle our borders is unfair for Brownsville, Texas, as well as El Paso and New York City and Chicago and other cities. And so I think there's blame on both sides. The Republicans have been really against comprehensive immigration reform and the White House has the responsibility of dealing with this crisis that has been really placed on New York City's lap.

Rosenberg: Now you, again, are not a huge fan of Donald Trump, but you're a rational guy. That's one of the reasons why you and I become really good friends, and I don't know how you feel about this. I really don't. I like to think I do, but I'm interested to hear your response. This Alvin Bragg, Donald Trump case. I'm going to tell you, it's ridiculous. There's nothing here. That's why the grand jury keeps postponing. That's why there's been no arrest. That's why there's been no indictment and there ain't going to be one. I can't tell you about the rest of these cases, Eric, Georgia, Mar-a-Lago, January 6th, I don't know. But now we hear the grand jury, maybe another month. It ain't going to happen because the truth is Alvin Bragg does not have a case. What are your thoughts on the Manhattan DA getting in so deep that he tried to bring a case that quite frankly, Mr. Mayor, doesn't exist.

Mayor Adams: There's one thing I learned, Sid, let prosecutors do their job and I'll do my job. I do not get involved with it. I do know that there are layers to an investigation and that I don't recall the DA ever stating that where was he in the process? I think there was a lot of speculation, there were a lot of rumors, there were a lot of innuendos flying around. But I think the DA has been extremely professional and really staying focused on what his job was, and that is to conduct an investigation.

And once that investigation comes to a conclusion, then we'll know what's going to happen when any form of announcement or no announcement is made. But that's his role. He has a [inaudible] mandate that allows him to make a determination on how to move forward and let him do his job. And, you know, I have enough on my plate than to play the role of a district attorney.

Rosenberg: Yeah, that's fair. Now let me ask you about Heastie. He was on the cover of The Post yesterday and I defend you on this, Mr. Mayor. Sometimes people are too hard on you. I know you've gone to Albany more than once, more than once, in an effort to this reform bill. And I know you've had disagreements from Kathy Hochul to Heastie to Stewart-Cousins. They have not been very cooperative. That doesn't mean you're not continuing to try, but all of a sudden this morning after The New York Post had Heastie on the cover yesterday, now Heastie, according to The Post this morning, is considering some changes. What are your thoughts on that?

Mayor Adams: Well, again, I don't know about what's being considered right now. The way this goes, the mayor of the city heads to Albany. I was up there six times to talk with my colleagues up there and really push forward the agenda that's important for the city. And there were several things that was on there.

Let me tell you, Sid, when you looked at the list of items that we had to fight for, $500 million paying for the MTA, that is just not fair to New York City, how we're trying to push our housing agenda of 421-A. These are things that are really going to impact the direction of our city and I had to fight for them.
And on that list of items is just continue to meet with my colleagues and talk about public safety is important to me. And I think that we're in the room having good, healthy conversations. And I had a great conversation with Carl.

Listen, Carl is a conscientious guy. Carl knows that we have to find the right balance as we move forward. And same with Andrea Stewart-Cousins, the majority leader in the Senate. They have a tough job. They got to balance all of their members. And when you are a leader of a conference, you have to hear all sides. And I think we're going to come out fine. I think that this is part of the Albany process, the negotiation that you're seeing now. And now I shared my view, they're now going to deliberate and make the decisions with the governor and their colleagues up there.

Rosenberg: So how closely now, Mr. Mayor, do you watch April 1st? April 1st, Hochul, the budget, the city, the state, all those things. How big a day is that for you, April one? Did I lose him? Oh, there you are.

Mayor Adams: As you know, talking about the boys [inaudible], that's the boys and girls of summer for me. What happens on April 1st is extremely important.

And Sid, people said last year that we had a terrible year in Albany. That was just untrue. We went to Albany with 12 big items that we needed, that were crucial to us and for working people. I'm a working people mayor, and we got 10 out of the 12. We were able to bring down a course of childcare. We were able to increase the Earned Income Tax Credit so people were able to get money back in their pockets. We got the NYCHA land trust. Many people were trying to do what we did and were unable to do it.

I can go down the list of things that Albany did for us. So you don't get everything you want in life, but we got the overwhelming majority of things that we wanted. And so we are going to get some victories this year and we're not going to get everything we want, but we're going to continue to push forward no matter how hard it is.

Rosenberg: Yesterday was a big day for you, Mr. Mayor. You launched the first phase of MyCity Portal. I know it was you and the First Deputy Mayor Sheena Wright. You also had Matt Fraser there as well as a host of others. For folks that don't know, the MyCity Portal is really a one stop shop for city services and benefits. Tell the audience, Mr. Mayor, about how big that was yesterday in the New York agenda.

Mayor Adams: I cannot tell you how excited I am about it, Sid. Many people don't know this journey to become mayor happened 30 years ago. I told a group of friends 30 years ago that I wanted to be mayor, January 1st, 2022. And every year I would remind them. People used to laugh, joke and went from laughing and joking and saying, "Wow, this guy is serious."

And while the years went by being a police officer and others, I took notes on my observation of the city on what we can fix. And at the heart of that was this concept called MyCity. We should have one identifiable way to identify every interaction every New Yorker has with the city. And I was blessed to have a person, Matt Fraser. I met Matt, Sid, when he lost his relative to gun violence. I met him there, we spoke, I took a note in my journal and I reached out to him once I got elected and asked him to join my team. And I told him the concept. He's my chief technology officer. And so we did the first phase.

So what this does for New Yorkers is it's almost similar to those of you who have a mortgage. When you call your mortgage company, you are not reintroducing yourself. They have your complete history. You don't have to re-fill out a form. That is what MyCity is. MyCity is going to say to New Yorkers: once you sign up, you are going to be able to know every benefit that's available for you in the next couple of phases. You are going to be able to know what your history is, how we can assist you.

It's a centralized way of finding out what your city has for you. And the first wave of that is with the childcare. We had a real childcare problem where parents did not know where to go, how to register. That's the first wave, childcare. And we are going to continue to add on a new wave of ways to just centralize it.

You know what it's like? It's like the old iPod. The old iPod only plays songs. Now look at that old iPod. Everything is [inaudible] smartphone device: your mail, your TV, your phone calls, your video, your music. That's what MyCity is going to be. MyCity is our new, going from an iPod city to a smart city where everything is going to be centrally located for you.

Rosenberg: Last two minutes, you mentioned gun violence, and I'll commend you, you've done a really good job, Mr. Mayor, taking guns off the streets. At last conversation, Eric, you had 3,000, maybe 4,000, thousands of guns that you've taken off the streets. And that's not a small thing. But when you consider there are hundreds of millions of illegal guns on the street, that becomes a relatively small thing.

And my point is, the truth is that none of these guns, none of these guns get shot by normal people. These school shootings, these are all angry, desperate, depressed, over-medicated kids who are committing these crimes. There's a lot of responsible gun owners all over this country. In fact, the majority are responsible gun owners that never fire their guns. The people that fire these guns are the crazy people.

Why don't we spend just as much time talking about crazy as we do guns? I can't.

Mayor Adams: Well, and you know what's sad? Look at what happened in Nashville. Can you imagine being home and you get that call? Or you're sitting there at the table and you see flash across the screen, shooting in school, if your children are in the school. It could be a college campus, it could be an elementary or high school. My heart goes out to the family members who have to experience this, like it goes out to the family members that experience gun violence in the city. I've visited so many families, and that's why I take this issue so personally. We have too many guns on our streets and that's why I don't understand those states that are stating or give people a right to carry without a background check. That is horrific to give people the right to carry a gun even though they're going through some form of mental health crisis. And I do talk about the mental health crisis, and I get criticized because I believe that we need to be proactive and not reactive. Do you know 40 to 50 percent of the people on Rikers Island right now have mental health issues?

Rosenberg: Sure.

Mayor Adams: 18 percent of them have severe mental health issues.

Rosenberg: Sure.

Mayor Adams: We should be catching people before they carry out the act. And so we rolled out our plan, not only in our subway safety plan, but also in our mental health plan to look at the drug use among people, to look after the mental health crisis that's impacting our children, and to look at the long-term care for people. We know that we have to hit this head on. Many people are afraid to do that, but I'm not. I'm afraid if we don't do it, what's going to happen to people in our city?

Rosenberg: Excellent answer. Mayor Eric Adams, as always, thank you for taking time out of your very, very busy morning to hop on with me. Happy Opening Day. Let's hope it's a big season for both the Yankees and the Mets, like we talked about from a spirit and economic standpoint for New York City. So happy Opening Day. Thank you again, Mr. Mayor. I'll talk to you later on today. Thank you so much.

Mayor Adams: Thank you. Say hello to your little guy for me. Tell him to root for the right team.

Rosenberg: You got it, man. You got it. Thank you. That's Eric Adams. Never wastes an opportunity to say hello to my son, Gabriel. I love that. My boy Gabriel. I will do that, Mr. Mayor. Thank you very much. 

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