Transcript: Mayor Adams Calls in for Live Interview on WBLS 107.5 FM's "Caribbean Fever"

May 25, 2025

Dahved Levy: Look who we've got on, our mayor of New York, Mayor Adams. Good evening, sir.  
 

Mayor Eric Adams: Hey, brother. How are you, man? 
 

Levy: I'm hanging in there, sir.  
 

Mayor Adams: I was telling someone the other day, I never thought I'd be quoting Joan Rivers. I want to say to Black folks, can we talk? Brother, I want to take a moment at the beginning of this interview and just talk to Black folks.  
 

Levy: Okay, talk to the Black folks. 
 

Mayor Adams: Someone said to me the other day, a sister said to me the other day, and she says, “Eric, if you didn't do anything wrong, the federal government would have never have come at you.” And I said, “Yeah, tell that to Malcolm. Tell it to the Black Panthers. Tell it to Dr. King. Tell it to Medgar Evars. Tell it to all those Black leaders that were targeted when they started to aspire. But even, you don't even have to go that far. Tell it to Brian Benjamin, the highest Black in the State of New York, who they indicted, arrested, dropped the charges, but destroyed his life.”  
 

So, I mean, did we forget? And so, and then folks say to me, “Well, you should have never made a deal with Donald Trump.” I didn't know President Trump. President Trump talked about my case while he was on the campaign trail. And a lot of people didn't know, I was facing 35 years in prison. 35 years in prison, for calling the Fire Department and saying, can you go inspect the building? And if you can't, let me know, and I'll manage the expectation.  
 

And so the Justice Department comes in and says, “This is wrong what they did to Mayor Adams,” the highest Black mayor in the country. And people say, I should be upset with the Justice Department. Tell me something, if the Justice Department told you they're going to come in and take away a 35-prison-year sentence for you, you would tell them no? Because you know what? If you did, I got some medication for you. 
 

So I'm not trying to hear all of these people that find ways to hate on a Black mayor that has turned this city around. I did this city well. I served them well as a cop, as 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement [Who Care], as a state senator, and as the borough president.  
 

I was treated wrongly because I was fighting for this city. And I thank this administration for realizing that and turning it around. And everyone else would have done that if they knew they didn't do anything wrong. So like Joan Rivers, can we talk? Can we talk? 
 

Levy: Sir, you announced the FY26 Executive Budget, and you called it the Best Budget Ever. What are the key takeaways from this budget?  
 

Mayor Adams: A whole lot of things. There's a terminology in government called baseline. That means you embed it into the permanent budget of the city, that it cannot be taken away. We baseline important items, funding for our cultural institutions, funding for our after-school program. We're going to have universal after-school programs in the city. This is unbelievable. This has not been done before.  
 

And we baseline so that no administration can come in and take it out of the budget. It becomes part of the permanent budget, those things that are important for working-class people. And we're proud of that. And that's why we know this is the Best Budget Ever. 
 

Levy: Wow. I'm curious, sir. Do you think that you have reshaped the political game knowing that you came from a street cop?  
 

Mayor Adams: Without a doubt, because what really inspired me was one day I had an 11-year-old young man that was in the precinct who was arrested either two or three times in a short period of time for a gunpoint robbery. And he didn't want to talk to anyone. He was cursing everyone out. And later in the night, because I did midnights, I went to speak with him. He cursed me out.  
 

Later on, I came back, bought him something to eat. Eventually, I sat down next to him and I said, you know, “Young soldier, what's going on here?” And he broke down and started crying. His dad was in jail serving a murder sentence. His mother was on crack cocaine. He was out of school for months. No one realized where he was. He was raising himself at 11. And that inspired me, man.  
 

By the time I got him, the system already failed him. And I said, I need to do stuff to prevent the failure. That's why I'm invested in foster care, paying their college tuition and giving them life coaches until they're 21. That's why I'm just doing dyslexia screening. 30 to 40 percent of our inmates have dyslexia. That's why we have 100,000 summer youth jobs.  
So we are doing things for our young people to prevent them from having to do a stick-up. We want to give them an opportunity to stand up. And we know that we are investing in them. 
 

Levy: Sir, it seems like you are focused on several key areas, including public safety, the economy, and quality of life. You're also working on issues like affordable housing and homelessness. Recent initiatives include investing in infrastructure, revitalization of Fifth Avenue. Wow, Fifth Avenue. And expanding access to after-school programs.  
 

Additionally, you were working to improve public health and promote wellness. If you had to pick one from a sense of urgency, what would it be? 
 

Mayor Adams: Well, first of all, I'm glad you listed some of those things because you're right. But all of those things deal with working-class people. Every one of those items you mentioned is about how we lift up working-class people. The city has betrayed working-class people. They have betrayed my family. They betrayed all of us. I buried my sister yesterday. She lost her whole childhood. 
 

Levy: My condolences, sir. My condolences. 
 

Mayor Adams: Thank you, brother. It is part of life, younger brothers should bury their older sisters, you know. But her whole childhood was raising her five siblings because mommy was doing three jobs.  
 

But if I had to focus on the most significant part of this administration, it's public safety. Public safety is the prerequisite to prosperity. We have to be safe. And when you look at some of the bail laws that Governor Cuomo did up in Albany, it hurt us. When you look at how he rolled out the cannabis law, it hurt us. We looked at the 15,000 elders that were killed in nursing homes. It hurts us.  
 

And so my number one focus is public safety. And I know if we're safe, everything else can grow from there. We can go to church safely. We can go to work safely. We can enjoy our parks safely. We can do everything we want to do if we're in a safe city. And that's why we took 21,000 illegal guns off the street. In the last quarter, we had the lowest number of shootings in recorded history of the city because of the actions we've been doing. 
 

Levy: Wow. That's interesting, sir. Can you back up those statistics as far as the numbers about safety in New York City?  
 

Mayor Adams: Yes. We're seeing a substantial decrease. When I inherited the city, we were spiking in crime. That first month that we were in office, the numbers went through the roof. And I knew we had to dig down and dig deep into the crime problem. And we did that.  
 

But we didn't only react to crime, we became proactive. We started doing hiring halls to give people jobs. We started doing internship programs for young people. We started doing justice-involved young people. We started teaching them carpentry, plumbing, electrician, HVAC. So we stated that if you give a person to want to live, they will not do things to cause the harmful life of others. We focused on that. And we were successful.  
 

And you know what? You don't have to take my word for it. There's something in this city called bond ratings. They look at how well cities are run and the success of cities. And they determine if they're going to raise or decrease your bond to tell people should they invest in your city.  
 

They raised my bond rating. And they kept leaning into that, “We still believe this mayor, in spite of COVID, in spite of migrant asylum seekers, in spite of a bogus indictment on him, we have confidence in this mayor.” That says a lot, brother. That wasn't my decision. These were the professionals that determined how good of a manager a mayor is in the city. They said they had faith in me. 
 

Levy: And, sir, with all this going on, how are you managing now? With all this happening, are you still being able to manage to the length that you've managed before?  
 

Mayor Adams: Yeah, God is good. You know, when you believe in God, you know, God is like your offensive line and I'm the quarterback. You'll never move the ball down the field if you don't have trust in your offensive line. They're going to protect you from all those who come to sack you or to harm you.  
 

God is protecting me. You know, I believe in God. Judges 7:2-7, God showed that if you believe in him, you can overcome all obstacles. And that's what I've done. And so when people tell me, “Well, Trump’s Justice Department had the charges dropped against you.” You know, I go back to the days when I was growing up with my mother and she would hit the numbers. And I would say, “Mommy, isn't that illegal?” Mommy used to say, “God uses who he uses, boy.” And let me tell you something. God uses who he uses. I don't question God. You know what I'm saying? 
 

Levy: Sir, as the election is drawing near, do you like your position and where you are? That's the first thing. And what are you going to do differently that you have not done before when it comes to the election cycle? 
 

Mayor Adams: Great question. You know, you go back to when I ran the first time to become the mayor of the City of New York, I was double digits behind that guy named Andrew Yang. A lot of people don't remember him. But he was beating me by double digits. And I said, I'm going to go into our community and let them know who I am, this authentic person. Perfectly imperfect. There's nothing perfect about me. But I'm just an ordinary person.  
 

And I said, I'm going to communicate straightly to the people of the city, particularly in the outer boroughs. And they heard me. And I started creeping up on Andrew. And eventually I surpassed him. And I became the second Black man in the City of New York. And I'm here again.  
 

There's nothing, you know, new about folks of color being underdogs. You know, try coming to America with a dollar in your pocket and open a small beef patty place someplace and all of a sudden you own a chain of them. Or try opening up a location on Nordstrom Avenue and nobody told you you could make it and you're able to do so and become successful. You know, we know what hard work is. 
 

And so all I have to do is what I think is easy, and that's work hard. You know, so I'm not worried about who's in the race. They're running from their records. I'm running on my record. I turned this city around and I served this city well. And that's all I have to remind people of.  
 

I'm a blue-collar, working-class mayor. And we should not allow people to do to me what they did to David Dinkins. Don't buy the hype. Don't be bamboozled. Look at the record, and the record and the numbers will separate you from the noise. 
 

Levy: Now you're so deep in the political game, and knowing what you know now, would you still have chosen the same path? 
 

Mayor Adams: Oh, without a doubt. Without a doubt. Think about it for a moment. Think about that foster care child paying their college tuition. They're going to graduate and not be like those who were abandoned younger. Think about what I'm doing around dyslexia screening to stop our young people from being locked up. 30 to 40 percent of our inmates in jail are dyslexic.  
 

Think about what I'm doing around housing, building more affordable housing in individual years in the history of the city. Or think about how I broke the job records. More jobs in New York than the history of the city. Just think about the impact of dropping unemployment by 20 percent in the Black and brown community, or $19 billion in the M/WBEs, or the 21,500 guns I took off the streets of the City of New York.  
 

The things that we have done, we are saving lives and giving people opportunity. I would do this every day. Some people would say you're going through a lot, what you do as the mayor. I'm the mayor of the most important city on the globe. I don't have the right to complain.  
 

When you walk through city hall and look at all of those mayors that's hanging up on the wall, and you only see one African American called David Dinkins, in a few years you're going to see another one called Eric Adams. I would do this over and over again, and I'm happy every day fighting for New Yorkers like I did as a cop. 
 

Levy: And since you're going to do it over and over again, mayor, I give you the last words.  
 

Mayor Adams: All I can say to the people of this city, don't listen to the noise, look at the numbers. Everything I ran on, I accomplished. Go look at my campaign. Talked about affordable housing. Did it. Talked about public safety. Did it. Talked about investing in our children. Did it. We're outpacing the state in reading and math. Talked about making sure we move people out of homeless shelters into permanent housing. Did it. Talked about reversing our economy. Did it.  
 

Look at everything I ran on, and you're going to say, this was a mayor that promised and delivered. And I'm ready to do it again. Let's finish the work that we've done and started many years ago when I started this journey.  
 

Love being on with you, brother. 
 

Levy: Thank you very much.    

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