Transcript: Mayor Adams Calls In For Live Interview On WBLS 107.5 FM's "Caribbean Fever"

June 29, 2025

Dahved Levy: The mayor of New York City, how does it feel, sir, to be the mayor of the most exciting city in the world? How does it feel now, today, after all the things you've gone through? How does it feel to be mayor of New York City?

Mayor Eric Adams: You know, it is interesting that you say that because when I get up every morning and go through a full day, you cannot imagine what happens in this city in a 24-hour period. I say to myself, you can never complain because when you look at where I came from, you know, struggling with learning disabilities, being bullied and laughed at as a child, and going through, you know, just the struggles of living on the verge of homelessness, and my mother raising the six of us on our own. 

You know, taking the leftovers from Amstead Daycare Center to try to feed us throughout the week. And just struggling, man. You know, having to put cardboard in my sneakers when their soles had holes in them. And now you look at how good God is. I'm the mayor of the largest city in America. So how can I complain? 

When I just want people to know that you have someone who has gone through a lot and I just want to help people who are going through a lot. But I want to help them in real ways and not give them false promises. And so I have nothing to complain about. 

God has been good. He took me through the harassment of the Justice Department. He took me through navigating this through COVID, navigating this through the migrant asylum seeker crisis. You know, God is good. We need to really just acknowledge how great God is.

Levy: And we give the most side of praise for all the blessings that have extended upon us. You wake up this morning, you can touch, you can talk, you can walk, you can smile, you can feel, you can smell. These are all things that we take for granted. But, you know, when one of them are taken from us, you realize how important it would have been. 

Sir, polls find–

Mayor Adams: I want to go back to that for a moment because you said something there. You know, remember, you know, a couple of years ago when I woke up and the doctor told me I was going to be blind in a year and I was going to lose some fingers and toes because of advanced stages of diabetes. 

I reflected on that, how you take it for granted that you have all your fingers and your toes and that, you know, you can see your loved ones and your family members. You know, when you go through that stuff, you just really start to appreciate the gift of life that God gives us. And I never take it for granted. 

Every day I wake up and before I do anything else, I give thanks to God. And every night before I go to sleep, I give thanks to God. I say Psalms 21 and I just really give thanks, you know, to God.

Levy: So thank you very much. So as I was saying, polls find, Mamdani beats Adams, if Cuomo sits out in November, but not if the former governor stays in the race. How do you respond to that?

Mayor Adams: Well, he's got to make a decision. You know, he ran and he spent over, I think, close to $30 million. We were not part of the primary. The, you know, the left arm of the Democratic Party normally votes in the bulk in the primary. 

But let's be clear on something. 2.5 million Democrats did not vote in the primary. A million independents did not vote in the primary. And almost a million Republicans did not vote in the primary. So in the general election, you get the full scope of New York. That's going to come out. And they have to make a decision. 

Those who have come from socialist countries, they realize what socialism is like. This is a country that believes in compassionate capitalism. If you come here as a dishwasher, you're hoping one day that you can open a chain of restaurants. If you come here as a cab driver and study at night to become a doctor, you want to be able to move up. 

You come in—Look at me. I worked in the mail room of [inaudible] and Mitchell, a CPA firm. And now I'm the mayor of the City of New York. That's what compassionate capitalism is about. As you work hard, you're able to move up through the system and succeed. And when you look at and do an analysis of the number of small businesses, it comes from the immigrant community. 

The Caribbean community, they didn't come here for a handout. They came here for a hand up. They came here to start their small businesses, purchase a home, raise their family. They believe in education. This is not a capitalist city. So when you hear people talk about, we're going to give you everything for free, but they don't know how to pay for it. How dumb does Mamdani think we are? 

And when you start to peel back his policies, he really believes we don't understand government. Now, Mamdani has been an assemblyman for only four years. He hasn't had a real job until he was 29 years old. He wants to, now, run the most complicated city in America. And he's promising us things that are going to be harmful to the city in general, but specifically the Black and brown communities. 

Let me just give you one example, Dahved. After bail reform was passed, in order to go to Rikers Island, you would have had to do something extremely dangerous. So whomever is on Rikers Island now, murder, manslaughter, robberies, serious assaults, et cetera, repeated offenders. He is saying we need to close down Rikers and let everyone who's there free. 

When they're free, where are they going? They’re going back to Utica Avenue. They go, they’re going back to Cambridge Heights. They’re going back to the South Bronx. So the people who committed very serious crimes in our communities, he said, let them out to go back and commit them again. 

While I'm saying those 51 percent who are dealing with severe mental health issues, let's open a state of the art psychiatric facility where we can start treating people for the mental health illness they have. Not dumping them back in the communities who were victimized by them in the first place, but that's the idealism of socialism that no one should be able to go to jail for committing violent acts. 

And I just disagree with that. And it's policies like that that we are going to have to discuss as New York is to say, what do we want our city to look like?

Levy: So I remember maybe about a year ago, two years, it was a lot of contention to the prisons that people want to shut them down. People and people were upset that the prison might have been moved to their own neighborhood.

Mayor Adams: Yeah, and they should be upset. Think about this, think about this for a moment. The previous administration and the previous City Council passed legislation that stated, we should close Rikers Island, right? 

Levy: Right. 

Mayor Adams: And they said we should build four more jails, one in each borough. And at the time that they passed the legislation, it cost us eight billion dollars. You know what the price tag is now for it? $16 billion and the population of Rikers right now consists of 7,400 people. The jail that they're building is only enough to hold over a little over 4,000 people. So we’re spending twice the amount and it can't house the population that's currently in jail. 

That makes no sense. We should not be building jails in communities. We should be building housing. We could take that $16 billion and build real affordable housing and take one or two billion dollars of that, renovate Rikers, build out a real job train facility where people can get the training they need, such as HVAC, carpentry, electricians, how to how to drive tractor trailers, what we have a shortage of right now. 

We should be not building jails inside communities. We should be building housing and we darn shouldn't be spending $16 billion that can't house the current prison population. This is called common sense. And that's one of the problems that, you know, you see no one is thinking about common sense. And I just have a common sense approach to governing.

Levy: Sir, if you wanted New Yorkers to know five things about you that will help you win the election, what would they be five things that would help you win the election? What would they be?

Mayor Adams: Number one, I bring compassion to this game because of the life that I lived. I made mistakes. I want to be clear to New Yorkers, even while in office. I'm 65 years old and you don't live this long without having people that's going to disappoint you. 

People have disappointed me that I trusted and they did things that I was not aware of. And, you know, all I could do is apologize to the city because when you look over your life and second guess some things, you could have done things differently. So that's number one. I'm not perfect. Matter of fact, I'm perfectly imperfect, but I'm dedicated to the city. 

Number two, which is important, is that I am extremely concerned about the direction of the city. And I love this city. And I'm going to do what I did as a police officer to serve and protect it. Three, I'm a common sense person. I came from a mother who raised six children on a salary of just being a cook. And she was able to make ends meet by making smart, common sense decisions. And that's how I was able to recover our economy because of the common sense approach. 

And number four, I know how to navigate us out of crises. I navigated us out of the crises of COVID, out of the migrants and asylum seekers, out of crime. We have the lowest numbers of shootings and homicides in the last six months in the recorded history of the city. I know how to manage crises. And that's why the bond raters raised my bond. 

And five, which is most important, I have a lot of titles, brother. But no title is more important to me than the title of dad. You know, I raised my son well under difficult circumstances. His mom and I were separated from each other, but we never stopped loving him and we never stopped showing him the love that parents just show. Regardless of our differences, Jordan has turned out to be a beautiful young man and that's the title that I love more than mayor. I love, you know, being a dad to Jordan.

Levy: Can you give our listeners an update on public safety? On crime stats?

Mayor Adams: Crime stats speaks for itself. Over 80,000 illegal vehicles removed off our streets. Over 22,000 illegal guns off our streets. We closed 1,400 illegal smoke shops that many of you were complaining about in your community. Our schools are safe. Our transit system, 4.6 million daily riders. We only have five felonies a day on our subway system. 

On average, the shootings and homicides in this city, they have been the lowest in recorded history. And so when you hear people say that the city is out of control, that is all headlines and that's just to get clicks. The city has turned around and we should be proud of what we have done. And all of these major crime categories, you're seeing a decrease in and it's because of real good policing. 

And now with our new quality of life policies, we're going after abandoned cars, loud music playing, people injecting themselves with drugs on our streets, people doing things that are dangerous in our parks. We're going after, now, the quality of life issues. 

I told the commissioner, if you can't stand in front of Gracie Mansion, playing loud music, doing things that's disrespectful, injecting yourself with drugs, then you should not be able to do it on Mother Gaston Boulevard or Utica Avenue or Fenimore Street, or South Jamaica, Queens, you know. So we need to treat every neighborhood and every block the way we treat Gracie Mansion.

Levy: Sir, I thought about this when we found out that we were doing the interview with you. Ladies and gentlemen, we have the mayor of New York City, Eric Adams, with us today. I said I have one of our favorite questions, sir. And how is the war going on rats?

Mayor Adams: The thing about this, though, is when I started this war on rats, because I hate rats. And anyone that has ever had a rat run across their foot, or anyone that opened their cabinet and a rat came out, or you go to the restroom and you open your toilet lid and you see a rat scurrying over it, you'll join me. 

If you have that negative impact with a rat, that image will follow you the whole day, if not the whole year. You know what I'm saying? And so I hired a rat czar, Kathleen Corradi and she came in with full steam ahead.

Levy: An appropriate last name, Kathleen Corradi.

Mayor Adams: The first thing is that she did her analysis. She came to me, she said, “Mayor, we're never going to get rid of the rats if we leave garbage bags on our streets.” And that all-you-can-eat buffet from rats turned into containerization. I've containerized 70 percent of the garbage in our streets. 

And we have witnessed a real success, a decrease in rat complaints, and particularly in what we call rat mitigation areas. People ask me all the time, “Where have all the rats gone, Eric.” And we're going to only get it better and better because we had to containerize garbage. And I know a lot of people say, “Well, listen, I don't want to buy garbage bins.” 

I would rather buy that garbage bin than deal with rodents running throughout my house or running throughout my block. And the war on rats, it has become successful really thanks to the team and Department of Sanitation and Kathleen Corradi, our rat czar.

Levy: I see that for the restaurants in New York City now, you have been able to re-erect them. But they're being done a certain way. There are spaces now that are open at the bottom that you can get in there and clean things out. I think some of them are movable, so when the truck comes to clean, they can be moved, the truck can clean or sweep, and then they're put back in their place. Is that the basic concept of the outside scenario?

Mayor Adams: Yes, they would. I saw some videos of when some of the sheds that we had up earlier, when they either moved or dismantled the sheds, you saw a large number of rodents were living under there. 

Listen, it was a needed necessity during COVID. It saved 100,000 jobs. Our restaurant and bar and nightlife industry, a $30 billion industry, it was on the verge of collapse during COVID. De Blasio, to his credit, he did the outside dining, which was a real lifesaver. But after that, we had to come and organize it. 

We were able to get a bill passed in the City Council that we could really sort of regulate the outside dining better. It has become a real win, and we're excited about it. You know, and people like sitting outside and dining outside during the summer months. I’m a people watcher, I love being in outside dining, and we're looking forward to it. 

You know, everybody jokes with me about, okay, you're always out, you're always out, you're always out. Previous mayors saw the city as just a nine-to-five operation and a little in the afternoon. This is a 24-hour city. When I walk into a nightlife establishment, a restaurant, late at night, 10 o'clock, 11 o'clock at night, I go into the kitchen and talk to the cooks. I talk to the waiters, the dish boys and girls, the bartenders. These individuals are working hard, and I needed to revitalize the nightlife industry, as I stated, it's a $30 billion industry. 

And we also looked at putting in place Operation Cure. We used to have the March program that used to go into our nightlife establishment. It almost harassed them. We have changed it to Operation Cure. We go into establishments, tell them what is wrong, and give them an opportunity to correct it. 

A lot of my Caribbean brothers and sisters have owned bars, restaurants, and other eateries. They would say, “Eric, they're killing us with keep giving us citations over and over again.” And we changed that whole mindset and made sure that we support our small businesses and not to harass them.

Levy: Sir, earlier this month, you announced the financial literacy for your program. What is this program about, by the way?

Mayor Adams: Listen, brother, when I graduated from college, my credit score was a mess. I was dealing with so much money, our old credit card debt, et cetera. I knew nothing about managing money. And I remember dropping my son off to college at American University and all you saw on the college campus were a bunch of credit card companies. No one teaches our young people in a very organized manner about financial literacy. We teach them about chemistry bonds, but we don't teach them about stocks and bonds. 

And so, what we're doing in 15 districts in the city, we are having a financial literacy educator. And we're going to expand this throughout the entire city. And it's going to do everything from teaching young people how to open bank accounts. They're going to understand stocks, bonds. We're going to talk about cryptocurrency, bitcoins. We're going to really educate our young people. 

So when they leave high school with that college diploma, they're going to also leave with a full understanding of their finances. How to save for a house, how to save for college or why not have high credit card expenses. Don't wear your wealth on your back or in a pocketbook or on your feet. We're going to teach them like what you've done, brother. 

People know you as being this important radio personality, but you made huge investments in everything from real estate and other things. And that's what I want to teach our young people. They should be graduating from high school with the mindset, I'm going to buy my home. I'm going to buy my property. I'm going to save for myself first. And I'm going to look at stock investments and other forms of investment. 

We have to become financially sound. If not, we're going to always be living from paycheck to paycheck. And so we're going to partner with our local banks and we're going to teach our young people how to manage their money.

Levy: Sir, you've got the last words.

Mayor Adams: This has been a great three years and six months. You know, some ups and some downs, some mistakes, some learning lessons. But I've been committed. I've been dedicated. No matter what I went through, I grew through and I became better in the process. And I enjoy being the mayor of the City of New York. And I'm not going to give people broken promises. 

We have a candidate that is trying to tell people he's going to do things that are not within his power. So either he does not understand the role of a mayor or he's intentionally using Twitter and TikTok to try to take away from his inexperience. 

I've moved the city out of crisis, New Yorkers. And, you know, you're going to look at me sometime and say, “You know what? I don't like what Eric did and I don't like– he's not perfect.” You know what? The perfect person, please raise your hand because I haven't met him yet. 

But if you are hardworking, you're dedicated and you want a working class mayor that's committed to this city, I've done that for you. I lived up to my promises. Made us safe. Bring back jobs. And ensure that this city is a healthy place to raise children and families. I'm looking to do it for another four years. 

Black mayors should not only have one term. We should be looked at how well we've done a job and I'm doing the job. And so I thank you for coming on and sharing. I look forward to continuing to be rocking you, rocking you, brother.

Levy: Rocking you, rocking you. Thank you very much, mayor. Have a beautiful evening.