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

July 23, 2025

J.R. Giddings: Mayor Adams joining us right now. We'd like to welcome him to the platform. Mayor Adams, how are you?

Mayor Eric Adams: Quite well, quite well. Really, pastor, thank you for those words. You know, every time you see someone prematurely... 

[Crosstalk.]

Mayor Adams: I was saying that every time you see someone prematurely transition, it makes us realize the things that are important. You know, sometimes we deal with these day-to-day strife and lose sight of those things that are important and really a great loss. 

My generation, we grew up watching the Cosby's and, you know, almost saw them as family members. So we definitely keep the families, the fans, and everyone that's associated in our prayers. Good to be on with you, JR. 

Giddings: Absolutely, absolutely. Before we go a little bit deeper, um, we know that you have quite a few initiatives on swimming because it's so important. Could you just... I know this is segway. Could you just touch on that? Some of the programs that are available to youths? Yeah, repeat that for me one more time.

Mayor Adams: I'm gonna need you to repeat that one more time, JR. I don't know why whenever I get on with you, my access starts acting up.

Giddings: I was just talking about initiatives for swimming for the youths in New York City. I know there were quite a few programs that you introduced within the last couple of months in last year.

Mayor Adams: Yeah, because it's important. When you think about it, this city is surrounded by water and swimming lessons were accessible to many affluent communities, but we sort of left behind our low-income communities, and we wanted to change that. 

That's part of our overall plan of how do we look at the things that many affluent communities have had that places like Brownsville, South Bronx, East New York, South Jamaica, Queens, etc. did not have. One of the items is our swimming program. We have put in place several swimming programs that would give our younger students access to water and swim classes, but also we partnered with the state on some larger initiatives and programs. 

We had a series of drownings that young people were impacted on, and we knew we had to do something about it, and this summer you saw a greater increase in the number of free swimming lessons. I've been talking about this since my days as borough president. I partnered with an organization called Swim Strong, where we talked about how important it is to give our children access to swimming lessons so they can utilize our pools, our public beaches, and other areas.

Giddings: Thank you for that, Mayor Adams. First, let me compliment you on the event, the reception that you hosted for Guyanese Heritage last night. It was quite a beautiful event, so I just want to thank you for that. So, Mayor Adams, your administration is one step closer to universal child care for low-income families. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Mayor Adams: Yes, and you know, it's often lost in the noise of how we have looked at the needs of low-income people and how we brought down the cost of living in the city. When you think about it, we put $30 billion, with a B, back into the pockets of working class people. I just came from an event right now of free high-speed broadband that's going to be extended to some Section 8 housing. We already did it for NYCHA. 

NYCHA, we did free high-speed broadband. Anyone who has a cable bill, you know how much of a benefit it is not to have to pay that money out each month. And that's the same thing with children. We brought down the cost of child care from $55 a week to less than $5 a week. So that's $200 we're putting back into the pockets of families every month. And we've done it with reduced fare metro cards for low-income New Yorkers and paying off medical debt for low-income New Yorkers, which is the number one cause of bankruptcy. 

And so when we did this rollout of universal child care, this has fallen in line with what we're saying, that we are putting money back into the pockets of New Yorkers. And the child care we're doing, I mean, the after-school program we're doing, I'm sorry, the universal after-school program we're doing is more than just saving families money. It is teaching children skills after the academic portions of school. 

We're going to be teaching them everything from robotics to tennis lessons, to dance, really developing their full personhood. Because far too often, children in low-income communities, they don't have those additional, watch this for me, those additional items that affluent communities have. And this is an amazing initiative, but universal child care is a universal after-school. I'm doing so many universal, so I'm mixing them up, but it's universal after-school. 

We looked at areas of the city where it was high crime, where we did not have after-school programs, where English was the second language in some of the areas, and we just really said, let's pinpoint this and give it to these low-income communities.

Giddings: I'm glad you mentioned high-crime areas because I know your administration is also teaming up with Citizen App to alert New Yorkers about crimes and emergencies. Can you expand on that a little bit?

Mayor Adams: Yeah, public safety is everything, and I ran on this. I know how important it is because if we're not safe, we cannot enjoy the benefits of our city. And as you know, we're looking at amazing turnaround in crime. 

Commissioner Tisch, we have the lowest numbers of shootings and homicides in the recorded history of the city, and we want to continue to drive down crime, from closing the illegal cannabis shops, over 1,400 thus far, to removing dangerous ghost vehicles. These are the vehicles without registrations and without plates and insurance. 

We took over 100,000 of those vehicles off our streets, and so the focus is to continue to drive down crime and the feeders of crime. That's important. It's not only to make us safe, but people must feel safe, and we want to go after those things that feed crime, such as something simple as our dyslexia screening for our young people. 30 percent of our inmates at Rikers have learning disabilities, and so if we can address those learning issues beforehand, we can continue to drive down and prevent crime in the aftermath.

Giddings: Thank you for that, Mayor Adams. Now, let's talk a little bit about, of course, the elections, the race that's coming up. Former Governor Andrew Cuomo announced that he's staying in the race as an Independent, and he would have a say in September if he's not leading, and he's asking you to do the same. What's your reaction to that?

Mayor Adams: Well, you know, this is typical Andrew and how he operates. People who are not in government really don't fully understand how Andrew has operated. He has a history of sabotaging Black electeds. He did it to Carl McCall when he ran to become the first Black governor. Andrew Cuomo gets on in the race on the liberal line. He did it to Charlie King when he ran to become the first Black attorney general.

He got in the race after Charlie was in for some time. He was behind. He got us in for the election. I mean, there's just a long history. People know his dad, they see the Cuomo name, and they feel good about it because his dad was an excellent governor. But Andrew's just a totally different person from his dad. And so I'm not going to focus on my race. I'm not going to focus on his shenanigans. 

You know, he was going around telling Black leaders, I'm not going to run for mayor if Eric is in the race. He lied about that. He said, after the race, let's wait until the ranked choice votes come in, and then I'll make a decision. So this is just who he is. And you can't change a person, they are who they are. I got to focus on getting my message out, and let New Yorkers know how much this city has changed under the three years and seven months that I've been mayor. 

We have cycled us out of COVID, out of migrants and asylum seekers. We have cycled out of economic downturn. This has been a successful administration with all of our flaws and our ups and downs. You know, I say all the time, perfection is not one of my qualities. I make mistakes, I make errors, but I'm dedicated to the city. This is a city that I love, and I'm going to give my life to ensure that we don't go backwards. We've come too far to go backwards.

Giddings: Thank you for that, Mr. Mayor. So I should surmise that you're staying in the race, regardless, to the end.

Mayor Adams: Well, I'm concerned about the policies of the other candidates. Three of them don't have a record. One of them is running from their record, and I'm the only one with a record. People could critique and criticize me. You know why? Because I have a record. I have something you could look at. And when you look at the record of the policies of the Democratic primary winner and others, those policies are harmful to our cities. 

When you talk about free groceries, when you talk about government grocery stores, you're talking about putting bodegas and independent supermarkets out of business. Governments should not be looking to put small business owners out of business. We have more small businesses operated in the city and the history of the city. We opened 40,000 retail stores under my administration. 11,000 of them are bodegas. 

So what about those Korean, Caribbean, Russian-speaking, Dominican, Arab-speaking? All of these different groups have opened these independent supermarkets and grocery stores, and now we're going to compete with them and put them out of business? That just doesn't make sense. And then to tell police officers not to respond to domestic violence incidents. That's one of the most dangerous jobs a police officer can go into. 

Officer Mora and Rivera were assassinated going to a domestic violence call. And so those policies, when you start peeling back the policies of the Democratic primary winner, you're seeing how harmful they are with the city. And the same with Andrew's policy. Andrew was the architect of bail reform. Andrew was the architect of, we saw 15,000 people die in nursing homes. He was the architect of the cannabis law that saw over-proliferation of cannabis shops and dangers that came with it in our community. 

I can go by all these policies and laws he passed that I had to fix his mess as the mayor while he was in office. So I'm concerned about their policies. I think that instead of looking at what the polls here are talking about, the same polls that had him up 40 points, and even the day before election day, his team was saying that he was up 10 points. He lost by [12] points. 

So it's clear that these polls are not judging the race because there are a lot of new voters who are enrolling and a lot of first-time voters. And so I think what we should be looking at who should be the mayor is who has produced results, who has brought down crime, returned our economy, and made sure that we invested in children and families. That's what I want to look at as the reason for who should be elected.

Giddings: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Rabbi Cohen, please pop in for a minute. The mayor has pressed the time and we're jam-packed with guests today.

Rabbi Eli Cohen: Mr. Mayor, hi, good morning. You know, I'm already seeing a slogan about something about empty promises versus real results. It sounds like you got the edge over there. I'm just talking of criminals and recidivists, the terrible shooting of the of the off-duty officer in the park near Washington Heights. I wonder if you could just talk about that and what could be done to change those kind of incidents where you've had somewhere that the demonstrated record of just out on the streets and also the maybe also the immigration part of that.

Mayor Adams: Yeah, real terrible tragedy. Thank God the custom border control officer survived the shooting. He was shot twice, once in the hand and the other in the face. This just really, God was with him and hats off to the officers who responded to the shooting and immediately rushed him to the hospital because the ambulance was not able to get to that section of where the park was located. Just heroic all the way around. 

But just this shooting highlights several problems. Number one, a broken criminal justice system. Like I said, the system that Andrew created were repeated revolving doors, dangerous people. These were dangerous bad guys. Second, it highlights how we should be coordinating with our federal authorities when it comes down to people who are committing these dangerous crimes, repeated offenders. 

These guys have been on the street after committing several violent acts and they were still allowed to go back onto our streets. That is a real problem that needs to be fixed. And so it's a terrible, terrible encounter. Now remember, he didn't have on a uniform so no one knew what his job was. He could have been an off-duty teacher, an off-duty plumber, an off-duty cook. He could have been any everyday New Yorker who became a victim of two [inaudible]. 

Giddings: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I know you have to go. I really appreciate you coming back to the Reset talk show as we get ready for elections in November. Of course, we support you and we will continue to support you. Have a great afternoon.

Mayor Adams: Thank you. Good to be on with you and please have a safe upcoming weekend. 

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