Transcript: Mayor Adams Appears on AM970's "Radio Night Live"

August 4, 2023

Kevin McCullough: All right, as we promised you just a moment ago, Julian Phillips and I, Julian here sitting in for Cristyne Nicholas tonight on the Fun Friday edition of Radio Night Live. But we are very pleased, Julian, to welcome the mayor of New York City. He's making his first appearance on this show as mayor. He was with us on our radio station a few months or a couple of years ago actually, just before Covid earlier in the drive time. But Mayor Eric Adams, welcome. It's so good to have you.

Mayor Adams: Hey, thank you. Great to see you, Kevin. And always good to see Julian, a friendship that goes back eons, decades.

Julian Phillips: Yes.

Mayor Adams: But great to be on.

McCullough: Mayor, one of the things that I think that New Yorkers are always kind of thinking in the back of their minds these days, because the city's been through a lot over the last few years, is does the city feel like it's supposed to feel again? Have we gotten back to normal? Are we where we feel like we were going to be at this point in time past Covid? And to that end, your office is doing some fun stuff. We're going to talk about your new newsletter and so forth. But how does Eric Adams feel about where we are as a city coming out of Covid. And looking at the future, what's in front of us?

Mayor Adams: That's a great statement. And let's think about that for a moment as we reflect on it. Does it feel like the city again? I say yes because there's never been a time that this city did not have a lot going on. I don't care if it's 9/11, I don't care if it's a great depression, if it's dealing with the stock market crash, if it's dealing with an epidemic. We've always had a lot going on. But here's the difference between New York and other places, resiliency. We're resilient while the crisis is going on, we're not sitting home under our bed saying, "Woe is me." We're out doing our thing. In the midst of all that goes on, we keep pushing forward because this is a city of immigrants. And if you are a city of immigrants, immigrants know you do not work hard to get here and then complain when you get here.

You came here to enjoy the greatness of this city. And that is who we are. I always point to the statue, not the Statue of Liberty, but the Empire State Building. During the Great Depression coming out of the Great Depression, we wanted to show our resiliency. And within a small period of time, I think it was within a year, we built the Empire State Building, and we were able to get it up and operate and to show the entire globe this is New York. We don't run. We don't hide. We face it head on. And while we're doing it, we're going to hit the nightlife scene. We're going to go enjoy our beaches. We're going to go enjoy the plays. We're going to continue to open our new businesses. We're going to thrive. And that's the spirit of New York. And so yes, we've always had a lot going on, but the world continues to spin. And if the world is going to spin and the sun comes up, New York is going to get up

Phillips: You know something? This is one thing I can say. Now I'm out of the administration, I can promote the mayor, and I promised that I would, and the administration here. Because I've covered every mayor in this city from David Dinkins up to Bloomberg. The one thing that I think that New Yorkers need to know and realize about this particular mayor is he just didn't pop on the scene yesterday. Unlike a lot of politicians, he's been around. He's been in local politics as Brooklyn borough president, state senator, prior to that, a New York City Police Department captain, 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care, somebody who tried to bring people together, even within that organization against a lot of opposition. But people need to understand that this mayor has come here with a lot of experience, and you could hear it when he talks about various things about history, and that's so good.

And the initiatives that he has brought to the city now that also combine the serious things that people want to know about, but also fun things that people really need to know that he's a part of. And of course, Hear From Eric. I think Mr. Mayor, this started, I think, right when you were elected. You put together this whole initiative to make sure people understood what you wanted to do and what you were about.

Mayor Adams: No, it's so true. I told the team, imagine if a major corporation, Apple or Google, or something simple as Tide laundry detergent, imagine if they only had the major markets, media markets communicate their message. That's not direct to consumer. We must have a direct to consumer communication. Now, our major tabloids news station, radio station, they have their role. They should critique government. They should keep us under watch and scrutiny. But it's my obligation to let everyday New Yorkers, one, what we have accomplished, which is amazing when you think about it, brought down crime, homicides, other seven majors, 11,000 guns removed off our streets, doing great things with some of youth employment, 100,000 some of youth who are employed, 110 in our summer rising program school all year round of, dealing with foster care children, paying for their college tuition so they don't slip through the cracks. 99 percent of our jobs we lost recovered.

When you start to look at this good stuff, I got to tell New Yorkers about those good things, but I also must tell New Yorkers about what things are available to them to help lift them up. They have 12,000 open jobs of where we see in high unemployment, particularly in the black and brown community. So if they can communicate directly to me, I could tell them those jobs that are available. We have reduced fair metro cards. Many people don't know about that. We need to let them know how to get those reduced fairs to put money back in your pockets, earn income tax credit, money back into the pockets of everyday New Yorkers.

What we're doing around NYCHA Land Trust, for the first time, finding billions of dollars that NYCHA residents can vote on. So Hear From Eric is not only telling people the news of the day, what we've done well, but is also telling them what's available to help you over typical times. And then bring on some great guests. We're going to bring on some great guests with interesting stories, that can tell people that you may see the story, the glory of someone, but we want you to understand the story, the struggles, difficulties hitting the bend in the road and seeing it's not the end of the road when you make the turn. And so it's going to be an exciting way of just communicating with New Yorkers, and they can see who their mayor actually is.

McCullough: You're hearing the voice of Mayor Eric Adams. And we're very honored to have him with us on Radio Night Live tonight. Mayor, I love the newsletter, and I think that one of the things about it that I appreciate is that if people go to nyc.gov/hearfromeric, you can get this communication directly. And I've always thought, whether someone's a partisan that agrees with me or disagrees with me, I've always thought that if elected officials had a more direct path of communication directly with the voters... We complain about the media and the different filters, the different channels give us. The best way to avoid that is to have direct communication. And this opportunity, for people to hear from you directly, I think is kind of unparalleled, at least in local politics that I'm aware of, in any of the cities that would be a rival to New York. Not that we can really be rivaled within our country, but you know what I'm saying. And this is a direct to them. And you can hear back from them, but this is a direct line of communication in a way that we have not seen in many other venues.

Mayor Adams: And it is crucial. And I love being around people. We've done a substantial number of town halls, unfiltered, right among the crowd, hearing from them. I'm on the subway stations, walking the streets. My team cringe that every day Joe Blow, I'll give her my cell number and say, "Listen, send me a text. Reach out to me." One of my favorite stories was put in one of the tabloids where a young girl was part of a protest in her school. She walked out of the school, and she text me and said, "Mayor, we're walking out because of the school conditions." And I text her back in like 30 seconds or something, and she shared it with the New York Post. They saw the text and they said, "First of all, he texted her back. But second, what is she doing with this number?" That's how you stay in touch If you stay among the people. You know what? You'll never be a good shepherd if you don't hang out with the sheep. That's what I learned.

McCullough: That's very well said. We're coming right back after this short break. Just a few more minutes left with Mayor Eric Adams. Stay with us.

[Commercial break.]

McCullough: All right, and we're back, again, filling in for Cristyne Nicholas tonight, Julian Phillips ably returning to his media roots. Dude, you haven't lost one bit of polish since you left Fox. I'm just saying. But we're honored to have you here tonight.

Phillips: Well, I tell you what, it's always good when you have somebody like the mayor on and you can let them go.

McCullough: That's it. That's it.

Phillips: It makes my job easy.

McCullough: Mayor, one of the things that I was very frustrated about last year was... And we have the Times Square Association on the show on a regular basis, and Tom Harris and the group that are there always giving us the statistics. So hotels were back at 85 percent from 2019. And they were up to 90 percent, and you would have all of these great positive things happen. And then there would be one wacko thing that went wrong. Somebody would be shot in Times Square, and all of the media would amplify that immediately. And it was like you try to get up the hill, you feel like you're getting halfway there, and then the media comes in and blows one incident out proportion. You brought in a pretty historic commissioner to start your term with. She has moved on to other things, but we're thankful for her service. From where you sit right now, how do you feel about the feel, the attitude, the return of tourists? Are we where you thought we would be? Do you feel like there's more to still be accomplished? What's your feeling on that?

Mayor Adams: Well, it's never enough for me, but let's be clear, whenever I am feeling doom and gloom about something that took place, I head over the time square and look at the number of people who are rushing to see our city, be a part of our city. We had over 56 million tourists last year. We're expected to get to 65 million tourists. When you just look at in July, our demand for hotel, it was up 6 percent, 91 percent from the pre-pandemic level. Our restaurants are booming. We recovered 99 percent of the jobs we lost pre-pandemic. This place is just excited. It is hopping. Broadway is booming. You are just seeing a real energy. And you have a mayor that enjoys leaning into the nightlife, which is a major economic boost for us. People don't realize that people come here because this is the city that never sleeps…

McCullough: Right.

Mayor Adams: ...come here because they want a boring time and go to sleep. So this is New York. And so I'm very excited where we're trending. And yes, you get those high profile cases. That is not an indicator of where we are as a city.

McCullough: Not at all. And it would just kill me because all of the... And it wasn't just New York media, it was like the global media would be like, New York. And you could just hear bucket list reservations for people in other parts of the country just canceling. And you're like, "No, don't come on and come anyway, because it's still the safest big city."

Phillips: And it's important to know too, that, just on top of that, my old job as deputy commissioner, the ridership on the subways is up now. I think it's over... Mayor, correct me if I'm wrong, I think it's over 4 million now.

Mayor Adams: Yes. Yes.

Phillips: People need to understand this. People are riding these subways. They're getting around. You get one or two stories of... It takes 12 positives to correct the negative, but things are going on. But let's talk about some things here, and the free things that are going on. Now you took Summer Streets to a different level. People notice Mayor Bloomberg with the bicycles and stuff like that, but Summer Streets coming to Manhattan, you've got all sorts of offerings and events, and sponsors all over for that. You've got here free high-speed broadband for NYCHA. This one thing, her story, which really excites me, I didn't know about this until I saw this today, her story, permanent catalog of stories featuring 10,000 women activists from around the world. My goodness. How did you come up with this?

Mayor Adams: Some good stuff. And you said something that was very important, Julian. This city was acknowledging the existence of just part of the city. Think about it. The Japanese Day Parade committee, they were only allowed to march within the Central Park, never allowed to march on the streets. We now open that up. I'm the first mayor ever marching in parade. Same thing with these other groups. Flag raising. We have raised more flags in lower Manhattan at Bowling Green to symbolize the independence and the diversity of our city. These people are blown away. There's time at the flag raising I see people tears running down their eyes because they feel as though they're finally getting acknowledged. And then all the wonderful things that we happening every day, all day in this city. It's a greater level of diversity. And we are acknowledging that this city is made up of various different groups, and we want to be a part of that.

McCullough: Well, if you want to get just a sample of what the mayor just laid out, here's how you do it. You go to nyc.gov, nyc.gov/hearfromeric. And you just put your email in there, and you're going to get the email sent to your inbox automatically, nice and convenient, and then you'll always be on top of what's going on. And there's a ton of stuff in here that are tips for your weekend, fun things to do. And many of them are free. So if you're on a budget, this is a great way to find out what's going on and enable your family to be able to do more as you're enjoying this great city. Mayor, we...

Mayor Adams: Free is that other four-letter word we use in New York.

McCullough: It's the other one. Yeah, that's true. Mayor, thank you for taking time out to be with us tonight.

Mayor Adams: Thank you. Good to see you guys. Take care.

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