Transcript: Mayor Adams Appears on Newsmax’s “The Record With Greta Van Susteren”

June 11, 2025

Greta Van Susteren: And earlier today, I spoke with the mayor of our nation's largest city, New York City Mayor Eric Adams. Here's that interview. Mayor, nice to speak to you, sir.

Mayor Eric Adams: Thank you very much. Great to be on with you.

Van Susteren: Mayor, all the big city mayors in the country are having protests, sometimes riots. But it seems like New York had a reasonably successful night last night, only 86 arrests, which was a low number based on the number of protesters out there.

What do you attribute to what I see is actually a pretty successful night for New York?

Mayor Adams: Well, it's a combination of things, and it's something experience helps. And seeing protests of this magnitude throughout the years, not only in law enforcement, but also as the county executive of Brooklyn.

We know that there are those who travel our country and embed themselves into issues like Antifa and others. And they have one goal in mind, and that is to provoke and to create disruption and disorder, particularly with our law enforcement community. We identify them immediately, remove them from the crowds and take proper police practice when they cross the line.

Van Susteren: I thought it was actually quite impressive last night in New York, because actually I studied about New York getting ready for this interview today, is that the police really did a great job in New York. From what I can understand, I mean, a lot of insults were hurled at them, a lot of terrible things were said, but they seem to do their job very professionally.

Mayor Adams: And listen, we all have human emotions when someone is disrespectful to you or someone wants to egg you on. These officers go through a great deal of training. We use the terminology, don't get hooked, don't let anyone take you out of your professional responsibilities. And that's crucial.

And Commissioner Tisch gave a very loud and clear message. We will allow peaceful protests, but we will not allow you to destroy our city or harm innocent people. And we will take action whenever that takes place.

Van Susteren: You were a former police officer, captain of the police force. Do they have special training, do they do any special training in New York that maybe the other cities aren't doing?

Mayor Adams: I'm not too familiar with what they are doing in other cities, but we go through an extensive level of training and we have specialty units that will come in when you have large protests like this. And you have people who criticize these units, but we have to just ignore the noise when it comes down to public safety. Whatever equipment that's needed, whatever training that's needed, we're going to do it.

I’m not taking any shortcuts and keeping our city safe. We know what any type of major disorder or riot can do. It could cost billions of dollars in property damage, lives could be lost. And I just refuse to take any chances when we do that. And my specialty units are going to do just that. They're going to respond to these incidents.

Van Susteren: Do you have expectations for tonight? Do you have any idea whether or not there are going to be more protests/riots tonight?

Mayor Adams: Well we're hearing reports from our intel that there are those who are mobilizing throughout the city and we're going to respond accordingly. It's a combination of what my deputy commissioner of intelligence, Rebecca Weiner, what she's doing of making sure to listen, to find out wherever intel can assist us, and we're going to respond accordingly.

There are many pop-up protests. Sometimes you'll see two, three hundred people at a particular location and sometimes you'll see a larger number of several thousand. But this department is really trained to handle large crowds and disruptive environments and we respond accordingly.

Van Susteren: During the antisemitic protests that I covered recently at Columbia University, there were outsiders. Are these some outsiders coming in specifically to stir up trouble? Do you have that?

Mayor Adams: I'm glad you brought that up because if you recall, during the Columbia protests, I talked about the outside agitators, professional agitators that want to come on our college campuses and radicalize our students. Some of the leaflets and pamphlets that were handed out talk about hating America, hating Israel, hating Jewish people. Just real mean and nasty things that were targeting our young people.

We went in and took appropriate action when they broke into a dorm room and we got the authorization to come in. So yes, and we found that there were those who were professionals, that they came from other parts of the country and actually agitated and pushed to participate in the taking over of Hamilton Hall. We're seeing that here as well.

These are professional people who believe in disruption and destruction of property and we're asking parents to say, it's 10 a.m., do you know where your children are? They should not be on our streets destroying property in the city.

Van Susteren: What's sort of interesting about New York, I also, I mean, as I said, I've dug deeper into this, in the last eight months, you've had a decline in crime in New York. It's actually quite amazing what's going on in New York because people may want to go back to New York, who may have left New York.

What do you assign as the reason why you're seeing a decline in violent crime in New York?

Mayor Adams: You have to take your hats off to our men and women of the law enforcement community. Their level of consistency, even under horrific criticism by those who live on social media and just want to attempt to criticize no matter what these officers are doing. But they've stood tall, closing major crimes, apprehending dangerous people and going after those who are carrying guns.

We removed over 21,000 illegal guns off our streets and when you do an analysis of what the commissioner has done around safety zones, those hot zones where we know crime always seems to take place for the most part, we have witnessed over the last five months a decrease in crime.

The lowest number of shootings and homicide and recorded history of the cities. Our subways are safe again, 4.7 million riders, only an average of five felonies a day out of 4.7 million people. This is all about our police officers. They took that oath of office to serve and protect and they are showing how to do that every day.

Van Susteren: Well, I know one person who would be particularly proud would be former Congressman Charlie Rangel, who was a legend in our city here in Washington, serving in Congress for so many decades. And tonight, and I mean, and this week in New York, you're honoring Charlie Rangel, who just recently died because he was quite a character.

Mayor Adams: Yes and, you know, a great American. He talked about his service in the Korean War. I believe he was a staff sergeant. He was an honored person based on his service. This is what America is about.

And when I hear people state in death to America, burn America, I think of people like Congressman Rangel and then my uncle Joe, who at 19 years old lost his life. Congressman Rangel came home, but there's a countless number of young men and women who gave their lives for this country. And I'm going to defend this country.

It doesn't matter who wins an election or loses an election. This is still the greatest country on the globe. And Congressman Rangel represented that. And I'm happy to have him land in state here at City Hall. I'm going to greet the body this evening, and then we're going to have a ceremony for him tomorrow.

Van Susteren: Well, indeed. It's well-deserved. And I might add, he got a bronze star, but he was quite a character. He's always fun to see here in Washington, U.S. Capitol. Mayor, thank you very much for joining us. Good luck tonight. I hope it's a quiet night in New York.

Mayor Adams: Thank you. Take care.

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