Transcript: Mayor Adams Appears on “Mo News” Podcast

July 10, 2025

Mosheh Oinounou: Mayor Adams, it's an honor to have you here.

Mayor Eric Adams: Thank you it's great to be here.

Oinounou: As a New Yorker but not just as a New Yorker as an Upper East Sider, and as somebody who lives on York in the high 80s as your neighbor. I go to Carl Schurz Park with my daughter nearly daily.

Mayor Adams: It is a beautiful park.

Oinounou: Yes for those unfamiliar it's in the high 80s on the East side just basically your backyard there at Gracie Mansion.

Mayor Adams: Yes it is and I spent a lot of time on the porch and just hanging out smoking a cigar. And you know just enjoying the view. Something is beautiful about living near water or on water and that park, that area is really special.

Oinounou: We have a lot of New Yorkers who listen to this. We have a large audience, national, international. I want to start there. How does who is New York City Mayor impact Sally in Iowa or Donald in Washington, D.C.?

Mayor Adams: I love that. There's a great documentary out called Drop Dead New York. It is New York City during the Beame years, where President Ford made the determination that he was not going to bail out New York. 

He went to a conference overseas, I don't know who it was, but it was a conference with the major leaders across the globe. And the head of Germany stated, we heard you're not bailing out New York. You don't bail out New York, the American dollar goes kaput. President came back and decided to bail out New York. What happens here impacts not only the country, but impacts the globe. People watch what happens in New York.

Oinounou: So, many New Yorkers are familiar with sort of the basic story, former NYPD, local politician, but not many know how you got there. And I'd love to start there, telling folks about your experience as a kid, an experience you had that would have led some to hate the police, but led you to become a police officer.

Mayor Adams: Right, and I like to say being the second mayor of color, being the first person of color to be the borough president of Brooklyn, of being a state senator, being a captain in the Police Department, that's my glory, that's not my story. 

My story is waking up every day, walking in the classroom and seeing dumb student on the back of the chair and students mimicking my inability to read because of my undiagnosed dyslexia. My story is being arrested for criminal trespassing at 15. And the police officers that arrested us are taking us to the basement of the 103rd precinct and kicking us repeatedly in our groin, both my brother and I. And he and I are not even talking about that until we became adults, and the feeling of urinating blood for an entire week and not even sharing that with my mother. 

Stories living on the verge of poverty. We used to go to school every day with a garbage bag full of clothing because mom thought we were going to be thrown out and she wanted us to have a change of clothing in the process, watching her do three jobs of just cleaning office space, being a head cook at a daycare center, my sister losing her childhood because she was raising us. 

And so that has really solidified me on why it's important that government must provide for those who are in need and give them an ability, not broken promises, but to move from where they are to where they ought to be. And that has been my primary focus.

Oinounou: But the story with what the police did to you, what led you to decide based on that experience, I wanna be a police officer?

Mayor Adams: No, great question. There was an African-American officer while they heard us yelling and screaming, and he popped his head in the room and said, that's enough. And later, I met a man named Reverend Herbert Daughtry. We just had the shooting of Clifford Glover, the shooting of a young man named Randolph Evans by a police officer, and the killing of a man named Arthur Miller, who was a prominent businessman that died from a chokehold, which led to a lot of changes in chokehold. 

And Reverend Daughtry came to 13 of us and stated, we're protesting on the outside. It's time for you guys, your young men, go inside and fight for reform inside. And I said, you've got to be out of your mind. How am I going to go back inside? I relived that trauma of that beating every time I saw a police show. I would not look at police shows. 

Every time I saw a black and green police vehicle back then, if I would hear a siren, you will constantly live it. And those who understand PTSD knows that your body responds, even if you're not physically going through it, you are still going through the physical byproduct of that. And so he told us to go in. I had so much respect for him. I was a computer programmer at the time that I decided to go in, I listened to him, and it was the best thing that happened. 

If you want to get a demon out of you, you have to go into what put it in. You know, it's like almost, you know, they usually say if you fall off a horse, don't wait, get back on right away. And that's what happened. I got in, started an organization to fight for police reform, but public safety, because they go together. And I no longer had those nightmarish feelings when I was around police officers or watch police shows. All of that dissipated because of my activism.

Oinounou: What did being a police officer teach you about this city and how do you feel it prepared you to be mayor?

Mayor Adams: Without a question. Policing is the PhD of understanding what is the byproduct of what creates crime. Archbishop Desmond Tutu has a quote, we spend a lifetime pulling people out of the river. No one goes upstream and prevent them from falling in the first place. Our governments across America and probably across the globe, they are downstream people. 

We only think about how do I pull people out of the river? And we profit from poverty. And I said we need an upstream solution, and that's what we're doing. Something as simple as dyslexia screening. 30 to 40 percent of our inmates on Rikers Island are dyslexic. So why are we waiting until they fall into the river and we pull them out once they commit a crime? 

What we're doing around healthcare, we're changing healthcare in our city. I had type 2 diabetes, lost my sight. The doctor said I was gonna be blind in a year. I was getting tingling in my hands and feet. They said I was gonna lose some toes. And it was all connected to my diet, my food. It wasn't my DNA, it was my darn dinner. And so we were able to do lifestyle medicine in our hospitals while the food is connected to the healing. That's an upstream solution. 

So it was an 11-year-old young child who was arrested for robbery. I think it was almost three times in a week. I was doing midnights. I came in, he was at the desk, spitting at everyone, cursing at everyone. He sat down inside to hold himself for juveniles. I went in to talk to him. He called me all sorts of names. I went back about an hour later, gave him some candy from the soda machine. And then I went back to see him after I saw him consume the candy. And I said, young soldier, what's going on? 

He broke down and he started crying. His dad was in jail for murder. His mother was on crack cocaine, selling her body on the street. He was missing from school for months, and no one checked on him. I realized that me putting handcuffs on this young man is the downstream. We need to prevent it from happening. And that inspired me, as well as Reverend Daughtry and Bill Lynch, who was the former deputy mayor. That inspired me to say that we have to do something about this.

Oinounou: So you're running for reelection for America's largest city, arguably the most influential city in the world, the global financial capital. Give us the Adams case. The question has often been asked on the presidential level, why are we better off? Are we better off than we were four years ago? Give us the case as to why New Yorkers should give you four more years.

Mayor Adams: And you know why New Yorkers can't answer that question? Clearly, are they better off than three years and seven months ago? It’s because our story has never been told. That is the biggest failure I believe I made as mayor. I did not speak directly to consumers.

Oinounou: You think it's a communications failure, not a policy failure?

Mayor Adams: No, without a doubt. And when I say communication failure, it's not that my team didn't attempt to communicate. We were in a city that was more attractive to the theory, if it bleeds, it leads. Yes, elected officials are supposed to be criticized and critiqued. We dropped the ball in cases. I made mistakes. I'm perfectly imperfect. 

So there are areas that I look back and say, darn it, I could have done that differently. But when you critique elected officials for their failures, you should do so. But you should be reporting the successes. You should be talking about the fact that we're paying for college tuition for foster care children. So the foster care children will learn that, hey, I can get my college tuition paid. We should be talking about we're giving high-speed broadband for NYCHA residents, that we dropped unemployment. 

If you do an analysis of our dailies where people get their news from, you won't find any of that. And so when you only hear the negative about an administration, you tend to believe that the administration failed. When I go into town hall meetings, I will walk inside and people will say, I don't wanna hear anything from you. I don't even like you. And then when we spend time and share what we have done and interact, they say, how can I not vote for you again? 

My job is to let people know about the story. Lowest crime numbers, shootings and homicide in recorded history of the city. Each one of our years, we build more housing in the history of those individual year numbers. 

We are developing and creating more housing than 12 years of Bloomberg, eight years of de Blasio combined. We broke the records for more jobs in the city. Broadway had the best 12 months in the recorded history of the city. When you look at what we're doing around public safety, what we're doing about the economy, our economy is the strongest it has ever been. 

Most comprehensive housing plan in the history of the city. So the record is there. It has never been reported. What I must do now, I must go to Ms. Jones. I must go to the South Bronx, to the Upper East Side, West Side, and say, here's the record you never read about. We have the greatest record that has never been read about in the history of this city.

Oinounou: Yeah, I mean, in light of that, I imagine you saw this poll that was out this morning. These are the numbers, mayor. Mamdani, 35, Cuomo, 25, Sliwa, 14, Adams, 11. You're the sitting mayor, you're running in fourth place right now. And a bigger issue, I would say, as somebody who's covered politics for a while, 28 percent of respondents have a favorable view of you, 62 percent unfavorable. It's more positive for Mamdani and it's basically net even for Cuomo. How do you explain that?

Mayor Adams: I just did. They don't know, they don't know their mayor. That's the one. But number two, look at these polls and what these polls have been saying over and over again. The polls had Cuomo 40 points up, 40 points up. He lost by 12 points, you know?

Oinounou: So, you know, when you talk about- No, they did show tightening there at the end, right? 

Mayor Adams: Exactly, exactly. See, he had him winning. And when you looked at his spokesperson, they were saying, we're gonna win by 10 points. He lost by 12 points. And this is what polls often do. Polls go to likely voters of likely voters that are going to vote. We know what we have to do. The reason you saw such a large number with Mamdani, he went to new registrants, new voters. And that is what we are going to do. We're going to, we haven't started campaigning. Remember, that's so important to understand.

Oinounou: Because you chose not to run in the primary. 

Mayor Adams: Right. And we said that we're not going to get mixed up in the entire primary. We're going to wait it out. Do I believe a poll that Curtis Sliwa is beating me? No. I know that we're going to get our message out. 

We're going to register a million new voters. And we're going to motivate those voters that know our city is moving in the right direction. And we can't go backwards. So if you focus on the polls, you would have thought Cuomo was going to be the mayor. That was a big mistake. And we know that what we must focus on, the real poll took place on a day that the voters decided they were not buying Andrew's message and Andrew should have never got into the general election.

Oinounou: Right, and so what's your message right now to Governor Cuomo? Because he's saying, you know, you and I, mayor, are splitting the vote. If we want to prevent Zohran from being mayor, it's time for you to get out.

Mayor Adams: Right. Think about this for a moment. Andrew knew that I was running on an Independent. He knew that Zohran was going to be in a general election also, because Zohran is running also on the Working Families Party. With that knowledge, he says that I'm going to add myself to that scenario. 

He created this scenario. He created the scenario where he and I are potentially split in the vote. This is a creation of Andrew Cuomo, because he wanted to do to me what he did to other Black electeds. When Karl McCall was running to be the first Black governor, he joined the race on the liberal line. Karl McCall lost. 

When Governor Paterson was the first Black governor, he did underhanded things and got him not to run for re-election. When Charlie King was running to be the first Black AG, He got in the race after Charlie King raised $5 million and he was one of the top candidates. Charlie King had to get out the race. 

Keith Wright, he sabotaged Keith Wright to be the first Black speaker. There's a history with Governor Cuomo. He thought that same history was going to happen to me. He tried to sabotage my ability to run for re-election, and it's not going to work. 

He needs to get out the race. He had his chance. He raised, he spent $25 million, didn't get out and campaign, took New Yorkers for granted, thought that he could just use his name and become the candidate. He never wanted to be mayor. He would not have even run for mayor if it wasn't for the fact he succumbed to the far left of our party and decided not to stand up if he felt he did nothing wrong, and this is the byproduct of it.

Oinounou: My question to you is, if we're in the fall and you're still trailing Cuomo, is there a scenario, do you think it is so important to prevent Zohran Mamdani from being mayor that you would get out of the race to consolidate support?

Mayor Adams: I will hope that people would think it's so important for him not to be mayor that Governor Cuomo, they would speak with him and say, you had your chance to run against Mamdani, you lost. Give Eric an opportunity to do so. And I have to encourage people, the pollsters who are calling around, they're not calling around and speaking to new voters. 

We need to understand that. My plan is to mobilize my base into different communities. When I say different communities, I'm not talking about based on geographical areas. I just left the Bronx, where I met with 200 supermarket owners and workers. This governmental supermarket is going to impact them directly. The last… two weeks ago, I met with about 250 small property owners. This whole conversation about no increase in rent no matter how modest it is–

Oinounou: Right, this is a big Mamdani agenda.

Mayor Adams: Right, it's going to, the rent rolls won't match the cost of repairs. We're going back to the 70s and 80s when people are walking away from buildings, people are not doing repairs in buildings. His policies are going to direct different communities of interest. That is who we are going to mobilize and understand. Many people don't understand the impact of his policies.

Oinounou: Yeah, I want to talk about him for a second because he got more votes than any candidate in New York City primary history. He motivated a whole bunch of young people to come out. A big thing for him is cost of living. 

What does that say that so many New Yorkers are willing to give this 33-year-old assemblyman with not much experience a chance to be mayor? What does that tell you about the state of New York and the state of New Yorkers?

Mayor Adams: Well, I think that, again, I think it's so important to New Yorkers have not really heard the story of how far we've come. COVID, we cycled out of that. 237,000 migrants and asylum seekers, we cycled out of that with the level of humanity that we deserve. 

22,000 illegal guns off our streets, our job numbers, our recovery of our hotel industry. There's so much New Yorkers don't know about the city. They're viewing the city through the prism of those who believe, let's say, a city of 8.5 million people, what are the worst things that could happen in a city of their size? What we've done around those with severe mental health issues, we have a real record of success. They have to know that.

Oinounou: But they're still feeling the price of everything.

Mayor Adams: No, without a doubt. Affordability is an issue, but the question becomes, I think nothing is more horrific than when you are dealing with poverty and affordability, and someone is telling you promises that they can't live up to. I lived up to that as a child, living on the verge of homelessness, of food insecurity, and all the things that comes with living in poverty. 

Worst thing that happens is when things are promised to my mother, raising the six of us, that they couldn't deliver. He can't deliver with his promises. He cannot give free buses. It costs $3 billion. And the way he wants to pay for that is to pay for the high income earners, 1 percent. He said he's gonna raise their taxes to those high income earners of 1 percent. Mayors don't have the authority to raise the taxes.

Oinounou: Right, you need the state to do that.

Mayor Adams: We need an assemblyman. He's an assemblyman. If he didn't do it in Albany, how is he gonna do it now? And the governor told him, she's not raising any more taxes. So the whole foundation of that promise collapsed. And so when you look at what he's promising people that are in need, he can't deliver on that. 

He's saying and doing anything to get elected. And the reality is, that will impact our city. And look at some of the direct things that would impact our city. Public safety is a prerequisite to our prosperity. To say you're not hiring anymore police officers, to say you want to defund the Police Department, to say you want to empty–

Oinounou: He's trying to clarify that though, right? He doesn't use the terminology, defund the police?

Mayor Adams: Because he realized that that should not happen. But he's not trying to clarify emptying Rikers Island. Rikers Island has 7,400 of the most dangerous people in our city, and they're there because bail reform required that you have to have a certain level not to have bail. 

The most dangerous people in our city, he said we should empty out our jails and let them free. You know where they're going to? They're going back to the communities that they preyed on prior to getting arrested.

Oinounou: What do you make of his proposal, Department of Community Safety, to have the NYPD focus on violent crime and not deal with mental health and homelessness in those areas?

Mayor Adams: That sounds like the auxiliary to me. That sounds like [inaudible] and other organizations and groups that are already doing volunteer police services or public safety services in our city right now. The uncertainties of what you are responding to when you get a call for service, you know how many times as a police officer and some of the officers now, you get a call for someone is just smoking or playing loud music and you get there and someone opens the door and they have an automatic weapon? Policing is not as...

Oinounou: There's no clear lines there.

Mayor Adams: It's just not. And the only way you know that is if you do that. So we have in our subway station, we have mental health professionals that are aligned with our police officers so they can talk people with severe mental health issues off of the system and get the care they need. 

We have mental health professionals that are responding to those mental health calls. And we all should have volunteerism. That's why we have block associations. That's why we have BIDs. That's why we have cleanup. 

But there's a clear line between police interaction and what volunteers should do. And sometimes this academic elitist approach, he studied struggle. I lived struggle. He studied poverty. I lived poverty. He had a silver spoon. I had a wooden spoon, and I was lucky if I had food on that spoon when it happened. I know what real New Yorkers are going through. And right now, out of the feeling of these real issues, we put $30 billion back in the pockets of New Yorkers because we know there's an issue about paying rent, buying food. 

We know that. That's why we're excusing medical debt for low-income New Yorkers. That's why we got Axe the Tax for Working Class, where low-income New Yorkers are paying no income tax at all, paying college tuition for children, bringing down the cost of childcare from $55 a week to less than $5 a week. 

So what I'm saying is mayors have to look at what they can do based on their powers and find ways to put the resources back. I can't do anything about the price of bread, but I put bread back in the pockets of New Yorkers.

Oinounou: What do you make of his proposal to have city-run grocery stores?

Mayor Adams: Think about it for a moment. First of all, I've been to Cuba and Venezuela, and I know what government-run grocery stores look like, but what about those grocery stores that are hiring thousands of New Yorkers? 

What are we gonna do to those mom and pops at bodegas, those mom and pops supermarkets, NSA, National Supermarket Association, a group of Dominican grocery store owners, my Korean grocery store owners, my Chinese grocery store owners, my immigrant groups that came here, invested all of their money to do these grocery stores with a small profit margin. And now you're gonna come in and say, I'm gonna do a government run grocery store and I'm going to put them out of business from doing what they do every day. 

And I think what Fernando Mateo used to run the Bodega Association said it best. People said, well, it's only one. Yeah, cancer starts out as one cell, but when it grows, it destroys the whole body. We're going to destroy the anatomy of these small mom and pop businesses based on the government. Imagine that, AP stores or Pathmark or whomever it is, they're going to be competing with the government. We should not be putting businesses out of business.

Oinounou: I want to talk, something that came up to me from a number of people in the community, trust, people's trust in you. Obviously, you're the first New York City mayor to have experienced a federal criminal indictment. People, some people believe that there was a quid pro quo between you and President Trump here. You even described yourself as perfectly imperfect, that you've made a lot of mistakes. What do you say to New Yorkers who are like, how can I trust him with my vote again?

Mayor Adams: You have to be honest, you know, by being forthright. As soon as the indictment was dropped, I apologized to New Yorkers for putting New Yorkers through this. And it was a very painful moment. This was the hardest 15 months of my life. But if you do an analysis of the day I got indicted to the day it was dropped, the city still moved forward. 

We still did the City of Yes plan, the most comprehensive housing plan. We still brought down crime. We still developed housing. We still opened up our child care centers, 130,000 pre-K, 3K. We still did that. I still lived up to the job that I was told, that I swore I was going to do. 

And then what happened in this case is that many people didn't read the indictment. I just really encouraged people to read what I was being charged with. I was being charged with calling the fire commissioner, asking him to do a building inspection for an embassy that the president was coming to. Not to pass it. I didn't say pass it. 

I said, just go do the inspection, which countless business people have complained about the lackadaisical approach in government. And with that, when you read the text that they were using as evidence, it said, “If you can't do it, let me know, and I'll manage the expectation.” That does not sound like pressure to me. This is all in writing. 

And then they said, well, for 10 years, when you took your paid flights on Turkish Airlines, you asked for more leg room. You ask for an upgrade. And because of that, they said that's bribery. And even the experts that looked at that and say, this is a real stretch. I was facing 33 years in prison for doing what elected officials do every day. There's not an elected official that would sit down and tell you they don't call agencies to say, what's taking so long to do a particular action? 

This was lawfare. People want to acknowledge it or not. I started speaking out and being extremely vociferous of this city having to take on a national problem. I spoke with the president twice about it. I went to Washington ten times about it. I did everything possible for them to take this burden off the back of New Yorkers that was costing us billions of dollars. And so when people say, well it seemed to have been a quid pro quo.

Oinounou: Right, did you have a deal, did you strike a deal with President Trump?

Mayor Adams: Think about it, when you report a lie long enough it materializes into the truth. I didn't know President Trump prior to him running for office. I never spoke to him. He, on a campaign trail, was saying, look what they’re doing to this man in New York. It's wrong. You're facing 33 years in prison and someone highlights what they're doing to wrong, you're not gonna say sorry? I know I am. I'll say thank you, I know I am. 

And when he, when you do an analysis of what I've been saying about the migrants and asylum seekers of getting rid of those who are dangerous, committing serious crimes. They should not be in our country if they're committing these violent actions. I said that pre-election, and I said it post-election. And when I walked out of the polling place and they asked me, who did you vote for? I said, VP Harris. 

And not only that, this administration took the president to court more than any mayor in the country, any mayor in the country. I said, I'm not going to war with the president. I'm going to work with the president. Thank God I did. 

We had a major project in Sunset Park, billions of dollars. It was going to produce electricity for 500,000 units of housing. It was 1,500 union jobs. They put a stop work order on it. I called the president and asked, could I come see him? I sat down and spoke with him, explained the project. The stop work order is lifted, 1,400, 1,500 jobs are there. We're seeing the project go forward. That's what mayors are supposed to do. I did it with President Biden and I'm going to do it with this president.

Oinounou: So how would you, if you were to come up with a word to describe your relationship with President Trump, what word would you use?

Mayor Adams: I would use the word similar. 

Oinounou: Similar? 

Mayor Adams: Yes. 

Oinounou: Okay. 

Mayor Adams: Similar to President Biden.

Oinounou: Oh, in terms of, you approach him the same way you approach Biden.

Mayor Adams: I gotta deliver for the city. That's my straight purpose. I gotta deliver for the City of New York. I'm the mayor of the largest city in America. Imagine me pouting for four years and not producing for the City of New York.

Oinounou: Right, because Mamdani says he's going to take a much more confrontational stance, in particular when it comes to ICE and immigration. How are you approaching that issue, especially in light of what we've seen unfold in LA in the past few weeks? 

Mayor Adams: Right. That's not unfolding here in New York. That's not unfolding. 

Oinounou: Why is that? 

Mayor Adams: I think it's a combination of things. I'm very clear, those who commit violent acts in our city, I'm going to coordinate with federal authorities to get them off our streets. It doesn't matter to me if someone is documented or undocumented. 

For example, we coordinated with ICE, the HSI, Homeland Security, on taking down 27 dangerous gang members. They were not only preying on innocent documented New Yorkers, they were forcing women that were undocumented. They were taking their documentation, their forms, they were forcing them into prostitution and threatening their family back home. These dangerous, these gangs are dangerous. Tren de Araga, and the others are extremely dangerous. I will coordinate with them to do that.

Oinounou: So are you not concerned with how ICE has been approaching? Some people are picking up off the streets with no criminal record or in some cases even detaining American citizens.

Mayor Adams: Well, think about it for a moment. We, in this city, we do not coordinate with ICE on any civil enforcement. And in cases where people went to court, and while in court, they were approached, we took, we joined amicus briefs. We also took our own action. We've shown that people should have the right to go to court. And I don't want an innocent person who's working every day, trying to make ends meet, moving towards the American dream. They should not have to be engaged with ICE at all. 

But those who are breaking laws, I made it clear pre-election, those who are breaking laws should not be in our streets inflicting violence. You should not be shooting at police officers. You should not be riding scooters snatching chains and doing robberies. That can't happen in this city. It doesn't matter to me if you're documented or undocumented. I'm going to collaborate with my city, state, and federal authorities to make our city safe.

Oinounou: Let's, since we're talking about crime here, let's talk crime. You ran as the public safety mayor. Violent crime is down. Six straight quarters now of declining crime. Fewest ever reported shootings in New York City history. We're also seeing murders down though in LA. We're seeing it down in Chicago. We're seeing it down in Baltimore. It feels like a national trend. I mean, you're a NYPD guy. What do you attribute, first of all, the rise and now the fall to both in New York but also nationally right now?

Mayor Adams: Right, and you're seeing numbers decrease and a lot of people are looking at what we're doing here. We were very specific on going after those what we call hotspots and going after guns. That was a very specific assignment. When I was on the campaign trail, I said I was going to put in place a gun enforcement unit. We did just that. 22,000 illegal guns off our streets. 

Murders in the last six months is the lowest number in the recorded history of this city. Same thing with shootings as well, because we're very specific. You can't murder someone with a gun if you don't have a gun. You can't shoot a gun if you don't have a gun. We zeroed in on those who have a history of being shooters and carrying guns. 

But we also had a holistic approach. That's why we closed 1,400 illegal cannabis shops, because they were magnets for crime. People knew it was an all cash business, because you couldn't have credit cards and other items to purchase cannabis. So we said, let's zero in on that. We went after 100,000 illegal vehicles, scooters, four wheelers, ghost vehicles, and confiscated and removed them off the streets because they were being used in crime. But we also, we were proactive. 

We went after justice-involved young people, put them on a pathway of getting real skills, real job training, so that they don't have to be on the street committing crime. 100,000 summer youth jobs, 110,000 Summer Rising, so our young people are in a safe environment, apprenticeship programs. We've changed the dynamics of how our young people could be engaged.

Oinounou: At the same time, though, felony assaults up, car thefts up, robberies up, and it's a general feeling. And I'll speak from personal experience, like I still feel like I go on the subway, I gotta have my head on a swivel, I don't put my AirPods in. My wife, who you just met, like got punched in the face by a guy who was at Borough Hall last year, she saw an NYPD officer, and he's like, “Oh yeah, we know that guy. And if we pick him up, he's gonna be released again.”

Mayor Adams: Right, right.

Oinounou: You know, that's like, I feel like every New Yorker has that story.

Mayor Adams: Every New Yorker may have heard that story.

Oinounou: Or heard that story. In our case, we experienced it. 

Mayor Adams: Yeah, exactly. Every New Yorker because we have, in New York, because we have 4.6 million riders on our subway a day. A day. There are five felonies a day, out of 4.6 million. Hats off to those transit police officers that are doing the job, the omnipresence. 

We know that the success in our numbers people must feel. So when you go back and look at those numbers, only felony assaults are up. For the last six months we have a decrease in robbery, decrease grand larceny order, which was a pesky crime that we had to come up with a way to address because Hyundai and Honda were not dealing with the fact that on Instagram they were showing people how they could use a wire to steal a car. We had to go to them and say you need to fix this problem. We showed people how to use the little tags that you put in your car so we could immediately catch the people who are stealing them. 

Now, remember, we did this without any help on our federal, on our state, and our city level. Bail reform, real problem, revolving door, Raise the Age where you'd stop treating young people as criminals for their behavior.

Oinounou: Right, that's why in some cases, cops are just putting their arms up, being like, bail reform is, yeah.

Mayor Adams: But what's interesting, what I'm impressed with, because of the support we showed them at the beginning, they're working. When you look at a number of cases that have been closed because of arrests, when you look at the number of arrests that you see these officers are doing. When I came into the office, I said, we're gonna pay you a fair wage and a fair contract. I need in return for you to deliver for the people of this city. 

And you look at the numbers the last six months, Commissioner Tisch has done an amazing job. You are seeing a decline. And we're the safest big city in America. That's why we're doing the Quality of Life Team, because we know people need to feel safe. Gotta go after the abandoned vehicles. We have to go after the open drug use. We have to go after people who are dealing with severe mental health issues. We know we have to do that, and that's what we're focusing on.

Oinounou: So, one thing that I know many people in the Jewish community are worried about is antisemitism. I'm one of the more than a million Jews in this city. The majority of religious hate crimes in this city are against Jews more than all other minority groups combined. They have gone up in recent years, though they're slightly down this year. What are you doing about that? And I'm curious, as you run against Zohran Mamdani, do you feel he understands that issue?

Mayor Adams: Well, I think that, I don't know what fixation he has with Israel, even to the thought of saying that if the Prime Minister would come to the city, he [would be] arrested. 

Oinounou: Yeah, can you do that? Can the NYPD arrest the Prime Minister of Israel?

Mayor Adams: No, but that goes in line with, he would say anything to get elected, you know. That's the pattern of, you know what, I'm just gonna say it, I'm gonna throw out red meat and hope it attracts. I don't know what he was thinking about when he mocked Hanukkah and thought it was appropriate to do so. I don't know his fixation with Israel. He said, I don't dislike Jewish people, I just dislike Israel. Duh, Jewish people live in Israel, you know, so that whole mindset. 

What we have done has been clear. Hate has no place in the city. Not only for my Jewish residents, but we've done it for all of our residents. I've stood with my Sikh community when they were attacked for wearing turban. I stood with my Muslim community when someone wore a hijab and was attacked. And I stood with my brothers and sisters in the Jewish community. I was there on October 9th when we were talking about we're not alright, acknowledging that Hamas needed to be destroyed and every hostage should be released. 

But we also, not only these symbolic things, we did substantive things. People told me last year, in 2024, that we should not have the Israeli Day Parade, that we should cancel it because of any act violence. And I said, like hell we would. We're not running from those who think we're going to run out of their threats and their anger. And we had that parade. We had it this year, in ‘25. We had it in ‘24. 

We opened up an Office to End Antisemitism, to go with an office we have in hate crime. We specifically talked about antisemitism because you can't have a city where a disproportionate number of people are the victims of a particular crime like hate crime. We also signed the IHRA agreement, that uniform agreement on what antisemitism looked like. 

And we have done Breaking Bread, Building Bonds, dinners, where we had 19,000 people at individual times and locations, had dinners. We were all sitting around the table and engaging in real conversation, educational changes in our Department of Education. So there's a long list of substantive things and symbolism that we're doing, because they both go together. 

And our hate crime unit is not trying to sugarcoat if someone is coming in and reporting an act of antisemitism. We're investigating. We are going to make the arrest when it's appropriate and make sure that we send a strong message. What I'm supposed to do, we're going to do.

Oinounou: Okay, cool. I'm gonna end here with lightning round real quickly for you, mayor. Real quickly, I got 10 questions for you. 

One, if you could wave a wand and change one thing about New York, regardless of, you don't have to deal with the City Council, you don't have to deal with the governor, what is the one thing you would change right now about New York City?

Mayor Adams: Have us– don't live in silos so much. Have us really cross-pollinate.

Oinounou: Best eat in the city, there's more than 25,000 restaurants here.

Mayor Adams: I have another one. I have a nice place up in Harlem called Uptown Veg.

Oinounou: Uptown Veg?

Mayor Adams: Yes.

Oinounou: All right. Do you have a favorite neighborhood? Are you allowed to say you have a favorite neighborhood in New York City?

Mayor Adams: Anywhere there's water. I enjoy being near water.

Oinounou: Got it. Least favorite subway line and favorite subway line?

Mayor Adams: I love them all. I'm a former transit cop. I think it's the best bargain we have in the city.

Oinounou: Most underrated thing to do in New York City? 

Mayor Adams: A walk and people watch. 

Oinounou: People watch?

Mayor Adams: Yes. 

Oinounou: Do you have a favorite Broadway show?

Mayor Adams: MJ, that was, you can't sit in your seat. 

Oinounou: That was very good. Do you have a least favorite thing about New York City? I think I know the answer to this.

Mayor Adams: Am I allowed to say the press?

Oinounou: I thought you were gonna go with the rats, but maybe that's what you call the media these days. And is there a political leader, dead or alive, who most inspired you, who you try to model yourself after?

Mayor Adams: Nelson Mandela. When you can lay on that cold floor for all those years and not come out bitter and become the president, I just think he's a great, great human being.

Oinounou: Mayor Adams, thanks for joining us. Appreciate it.

Mayor Adams: Thank you.

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