Transcript: Mayor Adams Calls in for Live Interview on GMGT Live's "The Reset Talk Show"

May 14, 2025

J.R. Giddings: Good morning, Mr. Mayor, how are you? 

Mayor Adams: Hey brother, how are you?

Giddings: I am well, how are you? 

Mayor Adams: Quite well. 

Giddings: I'm so happy that you could join us this morning on the fifth anniversary of the recent talk show. This is our 246th show. And you know what, do you remember the very first show? The very first show, I called you up. I keep saying this all the time. 

You were then the borough president of New York. I called you up and I told you about what I'm about to do, and I asked for your support and it's been a five year ride together. So before we get into anything else, you could give your remarks on the five years of us being on here and online.

Mayor Adams: You know, just an amazing journey. And I recall being in Borough Hall during COVID. Our city was shut down. There was a lot of fear and uncertainty that was actually pervasive throughout the entire city and country. And we will hop on the talk shows and you invite notable guests who were able to separate fictions from facts. 

You touched on those controversial issues from masks to school closing, to vaccines, to the science. And it was just unbelievable. I think there's gonna be a place in history. I know it's going to be in my book on how you were able to bring information to the entire city in general, but specifically to the Black and brown community. 

You just, you were a calming voice during that time. And many people was showing a level of hysteria and you would just bring people into the room and say, listen, let's talk about this. You know, you're bringing doctors, you're bringing experts, you are bringing conspiracy theories, you know, but you created this soft space that we were able to reset. That's the key. 

We were able to reset and say, hold on folks. We know we're going through a lot, but let's reset and start with the place of communicating. So I thank you. And I think a real indicator of it, I was trying to get on and there was no more room. You become the hottest ticket in town. I don't know if it's in the Knicks. I don't know who's hotter.

Giddings: Look at that, look at that. You already prefaced what we're going to mention in the next segment. We got to talk about the Knicks. But what we're going to do quickly, Mayor Adams, there's a lot of us to talk about, including your FY26 budget. Let's start here. Could you talk us through that? The Best Budget Ever.

Mayor Adams: Yes, and it was so important. We named it the Best Budget Ever for several things. Number one, you're not hearing anyone complaining about the amount of resources we're putting into all of these services that are important to raise healthy children and families. 

But we're doing something else. We're baselining many of these initiatives. So previous administrations can't come in and take away these important funding tools that we're using. Everything from universal afterschool. Think about that. Universal free afterschools for children and families so children could be in a safe space. 

We're baselining our cultural investments, our libraries, and so many other important areas. And so the real success story here is that when we inherited a real economic crisis from COVID, our economy was moving in the wrong direction to the 237,000 migrants and asylum seekers. That's cost us $7.5 billion. With all of that, we had union contracts we had to settle. We've settled over 98 percent of our union contracts. We had fiscal cliffs. 

With all of that, we managed the budget and those uncertainties with the bond raters looking at what I and the team, Jacques Jiha, I like to say Sak Pase, my Haitian brother, has been solid in helping me manage this budget. And with all of that, they raised our bonds, more jobs in the city's history. We broke the record 11 times. 

We're seeing unemployment drop in the Black and brown community over 20 percent. And all over the city, it has dropped as well. Jobs are here. Industries are coming. Nightlife industry has returned. Tourism, second largest in city history. We just saw the recovery of a city. And with all that we had to go through, my north star was to say I was sworn in to deliver for the city. And I lived up to that every day. And so this budget is an accumulation of smart, strategic thinking, a steady hand through emergencies to bring us where we are now. And we're able to make these major investments in the future of our city. 

We get ready to pay off billions of dollars in medical debt, J.R., medical debt. That's the number one cause of bankruptcy. We get ready to pay it off for low income New Yorkers. We're teaching, we're going to assist those who have student loans on how to go after those federal dollars to get loan forgiveness for them. And so we are helping working class people because I'm a working class mayor and I'm really proud of what we're able to accomplish. 

[Crosstalk.]

Donnatella Craig: Yes, you know, I'm always ready here. For my two minutes with you. You know, I'm gonna go ahead and pose my question that I have, if you don't mind. My most important thing that I want to, cause we all know I'm a fan of you, the platform's a fan of you. 

We are approaching [the] election and a time to vote. And I think a lot of constituents need to understand why it is you're not on the ballot. I've asked you this before, but we're closer, right? So I just want to reiterate that. Why you're not on the ballot and what are the key things that we should be looking forward to?

Mayor Adams: Yeah, and you should ask that question over and over and over and over again, because, you know, we gotta constantly let people know, cause a lot of this stuff is inside baseball and we know it cause we're around it. But everyday people is like, okay, I'm not understanding cause folks stop me on the street. 

And so, in New York City, you are allowed to run on a two major party lines, Democrat and Republican, or you can also create your own ballot line. And that's what we did because of the judge held on to this case almost weeks, several weeks, I think three weeks after his chosen independent observer said, drop the charges with no attachment that it cannot come back. 

It took him three weeks to make that decision and finalize that decision. That was the day before the filing the petitions, day before, we already collected 25,000 petitions. This shit just did not allow me the opportunities to hit a reset with the voters. The voters, think about this for a moment. Since my day of the election in 2022, the voters of this city were inundated with attacks on me. Even long before the bogus charges against me, you would not pick up any of our tabloids, our papers and read all of these victories we had. 

There was a clear mission. We're not writing anything positive. The one reporter from the Daily News, I'm not even gonna give credence to his name. But he would write, no matter what we did, he would find a negative way to spin it. He was obsessed with I'm going to criticize this mayor from day one. And so voters, I have to now get out and speak directly to voters. I gotta speak above all of those negative images. 

We turned this city around and the average person would not even realize it based on what they read every day. And so now I have an opportunity to run on my own line. I had to gather signatures, 3,750 signatures. And that's what I'm doing now. We're in the process of doing now. We have to get more than that. We wanna get anywhere from about 25,000 signatures. And it's going to allow people to determine who they're going to vote for. 

I would be in a general election. I'm still a Democrat. A lot of people hear the word independent and think that I'm not a Democrat. I'm still a Democrat, but I'll be running on my own line. And people have an opportunity to hear from me up until November election day. And question me, let me debate who's representing the Democratic Party, the Republican Party, and the Working Families Party. So there's other lines out there that people will be running on. But I'm a Democrat. I'm running on my own line. And hopefully people will look for it. And I will have time now to reset the negative energy that has been lurking over me.

Craig: Thank you for that answer. And I'm gonna pass on to one of my panelists. But I must say you are doing an amazing job with your media. And I saw your announcement about the FinTech Conference that's coming up on May 20th. I'm gonna be outside the gate trying to get in because I work in FinTech.

Mayor Adams: You know, and doctor, I know you say I got my smoothie.

Dr. Shellyanne Giddings: Yes, great to see you, Mayor Adams. Good to see you. I enjoyed seeing you at the Reset Awards. That was amazing. We had a great picture together. I don't know if you saw that one. But thank you for all of the initiatives that you do. And especially, you know, I'm a pediatrician and the whole Healthy Kids Initiative and the afterschool programs are amazing. You know, our kids are our future. So thanks for taking care of them. And thanks for all that you do.

Mayor Adams: Thank you. Hey, Pastor, how you doing? Need a lot of prayer. 

Pastor Louis Straker Jr.: I'm praying for you, Mr. Mayor. You're on my prayer list. God bless you, sir. Thank you.

Mayor Adams: J.R., can I talk about two quick items that's really heavy on my heart? One, brother, we had a 14-year-old young child shoot a 16-year-old girl. And she was not even his intended target. When I went up to the Bronx, I saw the video. He was just shooting indiscriminately into the crowd. And there's some other aspects of who he is as a person that's going to come out eventually. 

But this is attributed to many of the failed laws and policies that lawmakers are putting in place that they don't realize how it impacts on the ground. There was a law that was passed seven years ago for a lady that is a victim of child abuse. The law has created an environment where I strongly believe we're seeing a larger number of young people who are the victims of shootings and a large number of young people who are carrying out shootings. 

There's no repercussion because of some of this action that they give these young people the help that they deserve. And so I don't know if you remember, probably when I was a state senator, I did this video of showing parents how to move through the rooms and find if a gun is there in their child's room or drugs or something so that you could be ahead of it. Because no one has struck parents on what is the trends that are in our societies. 

And that video was a simple way of doing that. I was mocked. I was laughed at. People called me all sorts of names, but you know what? I'm going to redo that video because parents are losing their children and they were not mocking me. They told me back then, thank you for this, Eric, because it was instructional and informative. 

We gotta educate parents so that they are aware of what is happening to their children, from social media to gang violence to the overuse of drugs and overproliferation of guns. You now can make guns. We did an arrest and a raid in the Bronx of a child who was in his parents' home using a 3D printer to make guns. If we don't inform parents of this information, they're not going to have the tools to push back and fight back on these problems.

Pastor Straker: And so, Mr. Mayor, I'm glad you spoke about that. I think J.R. is a little bit delayed there. I thank you so much for bringing that up. So, Mr. Mayor, if I may ask, I think the discovery laws, the adjustments that were made on the state level, I believe they're supposed to be coming through. What are your views on some of the adjustments the governor has made on the discovery laws?

Mayor Adams: You know, pastor, you know what's interesting, and I'm sure you know it as well as I do, that oftentimes when we see something that's wrong, we over-correct, you know, we over-correct. And that's what we did with bail. That's what we did with discovery. That's what we did with Raise the Age. Because we saw abusive practices in law enforcement throughout the years, we over-corrected. We over-corrected with discovery. We over-corrected with bail. 

The bail issue is part of the recidivism problem that we have. And the Raise the Age is part of the young people being participating in more violence. So, our hearts were in the right place. And nobody likes to report that when I say that, because I know the hearts was in the right place, because many of these reforms were part of my accord when I was in Albany. 

But we went too far. And so, what you saw, the DAs, the police commissioners, everyone reached out to Albany and say, gotta modify the discovery laws. What the discovery laws are, for those who are not familiar, is that when someone is arrested, the Police Department, the prosecutors, et cetera, must turn over all these documents that are discovery, part of the discovery process. 

So, the defense attorneys can have a fair opportunity to defend their clients, which they should, because due process is important. But when you started to look at items that really were not connected to the evidence of the case, and if that was not turned over with such a short period of time, the case could be dismissed and dropped. 

That was just hurting the process. And people took advantage of that. And we saw dangerous people, cases being dropped, and it just created a real problem. And that's why the district attorneys, the governor, and others, looked at the discovery laws to make them fair, but not to get in the way of prosecuting dangerous actions.

Pastor Straker: Yeah, no, I agree. You know, it's a delicate balance because we don't wanna have Kalief Browder sitting down in the jail cell waiting for a trial. I believe everyone needs to get a speedy trial, but we can't allow some of these loopholes to allow some of these folks that have been harming people in the streets to just have a revolving door where they're back out again. Speaking on that, the Q-teams, NYPDs, rolling out Q-teams. Can you just talk a little bit about what that is?

Mayor Adams: Because first, we should dispel the belief that we're going backwards to harassing people with stop-and-frisks and what have you. That is not what these quality of life teams are. They’re going to be well trained, they’re going to be trained in conflict resolution. The goal is not to incarcerate but to correct quality of life conditions. I get it all the time, my brothers and sisters out in Canarsie call me up and say, Eric, we’ve got this abandoned car on our street again, dumping cars here, over and over again. 

Every community is aware of where their problems are. People know where illegal dumplings take place. They know the vacant lot. They know under a train overhead. Everybody knows, hey, East New York, they talk about going towards the shopping mall. People dump stuff there all the time. And so what we're saying with this quality of life team is the quality of life I have around Gracie Mansion should be the quality of life we have in Brownsville. 

No one is allowed to double park their car in front of Gracie Mansion, smoking, drinking, playing loud music to 2, 3 a.m. in the morning. So they shouldn't be able to do it in front of Gracie Mansion. They should not be able to do it on Mother Gaston Boulevard. That's what we're saying. We're saying we want the same quality of life we have in affluent communities. They must be in all communities of this city. 

So we're going after loud music playing, illegal dumping, illegal cars, just being disruptive, unclean streets, trash overrun in the communities. So we are now holding the precinct commanders to have their quality enforcement teams to go out as they move throughout the city, look at these problems, refer it to the proper agency, or take corrective actions on their own. 

But arrest, summonses, that is not our first stop. Our first stop is to correct the condition. It's a small decision by the police commissioner because that's what I hear all the time. I hear all the time everywhere I go, why is this street light out, Eric? Why is this illegal dumping is here? Why is this abandoned car here? I was up in the Bronx doing one of the shows and the person told me that on one of the major roadways every night there are 20-30 cars lined up smoking, drinking, playing music loud, being disruptive. People don't want that in their community. They want a quality of life and that's what this is about.

Pastor Straker: We often hear the phrase, you know, public safety is a shared responsibility. Is there any thought to quality of life being a shared responsibility, that not only the NYPD would be responsible for handling this, but more agencies, more community involvement, even involving maybe some of our community violence interrupters. Is there any thought on making this broader than just NYPD? 

Mayor Adams: No, without a doubt. Our BIDs are engaged, our crisis management teams are engaged, and so NYPD is rolling it out, but it really is going to involve all of our partners. That's one thing we have been successful at doing, the God Squad and others. We have been really engaging our partners in this initiative.

Pastor Straker: Awesome, awesome. Mr. Mayor, I don't know how much time you have left, but J.R., I hope he wasn't raptured and left us all behind.

Mayor Adams: You know, and one more thing I want to share with folks before I take off. The second thing that's been heavy on my heart, J.R., is this case, this bogus case that we just went through. And people often stop me and say, well, Eric, the federal government won't just do something like this unless there was something to it. And Black and brown folks, I really want y'all to just go back and do some history. 

Look what they did to Dr. King, sending tapes to his home, following him, monitoring him. Look what they did to the Us Movement and the Black Panthers. They were sending them letters to create conflicts between them, hoping that they would get involved with some battles. Medgar Evers, NAACP, Marcus Garvey. I can go through the list of those black and brown civil rights leaders that had to go through unjust treatment. And back then, many people would say, well, that's not possible. 

You know, you wouldn't have federal agencies to target Malcolm, target Dr. King, target Medgar Evers and others. But it did happen. And history is showing us that it did happen. And many people didn't believe when I was arrested and beat by police officers, and I got off the floor of the 103rd precinct and went into the Police Department. I've always stood strong. 

History is going to show what happened here. Pastor Straker, they were planning on going to the end of the New York City Marathon, where the entire globe is waiting for the ending to take place. They were going to surround me and take my phones from me at the end of the New York City Marathon, because I was there to greet the winning runner. The goal was to embarrass and humiliate me. 

They could have knocked on my door at Gracie Mansion. They didn't have to plan to go to the end of the marathon or to meet me in the street in the village to do this. When you looked over all of this, this was a well-orchestrated goal of humiliating the mayor of the largest city in the country, because I stood up for New Yorkers. It was wrong what they did to us. And history is going to show how wrong it was. It's going to show what actually happened here. 

So some of the files of the 60s and what happened with Dr. King, Malcolm, the Black Panthers, and others, they're finally being revealed, and we're reading through some of them. And one of the files that I recall, one of the memos that was in there, it was a memo from the FBI records. It says, discredit, disrupt, and destroy the Black leaders. They were using surveillance. They were using all sorts of tools. And the DNA of that mindset, if you think it no longer exists, you've got another thing coming. 

And the COINTELPRO program back then that targeted us is no different than the targeting that I experienced over these last 15 months. And history is going to be kind when people find out what exactly happened, but it's no different. There's a history of going after leaders of color in this country, and it has not changed. And we need to stop this weaponization and lawfare that we've experienced. 

So I just wanted to share that with you all. And thank you. This platform has allowed me the opportunity to share how we moved the city forward. And you have become therapeutic for me also, because you were willing to at least listen to what I had to say during these last few years, the last 15 months. So your anniversary is my anniversary. So happy anniversary.

Pastor Straker: Thank you so much, Mr. Mayor. God bless you. Thank you for joining us today.