Transcript: Mayor de Blasio Appears Live on MSNBC's Morning Joe

October 20, 2021

Willie Geist: At least 21 Chicago police officers, meanwhile, have been placed on no-pay status for failing to disclose whether they've been vaccinated by last Friday's deadline. As of yesterday, officials say nearly 70 percent of the department's workforce has entered the information into the city's vaccination portal. Of those employees, 82 percent say they are fully vaccinated. The other 18 percent now will be subject to twice weekly COVID testing through the end of the year. No staffing shortage yet has been reported as a result of that vaccine mandate. Meanwhile, in New York City, the highly contagious Delta variant makes up 98 percent of all new COVID-19 cases. But according to the latest Health Department data, the rate of transmission is plunging thanks to the city's ongoing vaccination effort. And that continues this morning. Joining us now, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio. Mr. Mayor, it's good to see you.  

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Good to see you, Willie. 

Geist: So, what is the next step here? You put it in the mandate for teachers. Now you're going bigger with it. What's the announcement? 

Mayor: It's a mandate now for all City agencies, all City workers. It's time for everyone to get vaccinated. Our public employees are going to lead us out of the COVID era. Look, what we did with our schools worked. Our schools are incredibly safe, and families needed to know their kids would be safe. Well, we all need to know we're going to be safe going forward. We got to end the COVID era. Our police officers, our EMTs, our firefighters, all our public employees, a lot of whom come in very close contact with their fellow New Yorkers, they need to be safe, their families need to be safe, but we also need to reassure all New Yorkers that if you're working with a public employee, they're vaccinated, everyone's going to be safe. 

Geist: The City has done pretty well with its public employees already. I think the number is, 70 percent of them have been vaccinated. So, you're really targeting the other 30 percent. And you specifically mentioned police and firefighters. We know some of those vaccination rates have been a little lower. Is that who you're thinking about here? 

Mayor: I'm thinking about all City employees who are not yet vaccinated. We need them across the board. It’s about 46,000 who still are not vaccinated. And we proved with our schools, we proved with our hospitals, it can be done the right way, the safe way for everybody. And this is part of why we've got COVID on the run right now in New York City. But you'd never – look, we learned the hard way with the Delta variant. Never let up the gas on COVID, never think it's easy to defeat this enemy. We've got more work to do. Our public employees have to be part of this solution. But what I think is on a very human level, we have lost a lot of our public employees. We've lost a lot of people who serve us. In this country law enforcement, we've lost 460 law enforcement officers to COVID, more than to any other cause. And we've got to protect them. We've got to protect each other. And we've got to realize if we don't keep vaccination strong, we won't turn the corner fast enough. We'll lose tens of thousands more people in this country. And I'm saying this to every mayor, every governor, every CEO, it's time for these mandates, finish this war, or we're going to have COVID with us way too long. 

Geist: So, places like Chicago have said to their police officers, get the vaccine or you'll be tested twice weekly. You're getting rid of the testing option. Is that right?  

Mayor: Correct.  

Geist: So, what will you say to a police officer who says, ‘I have a principal objection to it.’ Maybe not even asking for a religious accommodation or anything else, but saying, ‘I don't want to get the vaccine.’ What happens to that officer? 

Mayor: Look, we're offering religious accommodation. It has to be real. We're offering medical accommodation. That has to be real, too. And there's a process to ensure that. We've also given people months and months to get vaccinated voluntarily. We're providing incentives. We're providing a $500 additional incentive from this point on for public employees who get vaccinated. We've given people a lot of time. We did the vaccinate-or-test option, but it hasn't gotten us where we need to go. So, we say vaccinate, if you choose not to, you have the right to go on unpaid leave. We're going to work with your union to figure out what happens next. But the bottom line is we're not going to pay people unless they're vaccinated. They don't lose their jobs, they can correct and come back. I think that's compassionate. I think that's right. But the bottom line is all – 96 percent of our education employees did it. 96 percent of our health care workers did it. It's time for everyone else. 

Geist: And what's the deadline on this, Mr. Mayor, when do these City officials need to be vaccinated? 

Mayor: October 29th, 5:00 PM. And then anyone who's not, as of November 1st, goes off payroll, goes onto unpaid leave.  

Geist: So, coming up quickly. A week from Friday. 

Jonathan Lemire: That’s right. So, let's talk – one of the unions, there've been some pushback from some of the law enforcement unions, uniform services. The corrections officers – now there's an exception here, is that right? They have more time? 

Mayor: Corrections – our Corrections agency, for anyone civilian, they have to be part of this deadline. For those who work in the health care facilities related to Corrections, they're also part of this deadline. We're giving an additional month to some of the other officers for a reason. We've had a real problem lately – it's been very public, obviously – on Rikers Island, our main Correction facility. There was a massive amount of staff out. We need people to come back and we need to address real situations there. So, we've added a month for that small group only, but it is still a mandate. They have to meet that mandate.  

Lemire: And if those numbers don't come up, you're right, I mean the Rikers Island situation has become a real – a bad headline here in New York City for some time. What will be done to improve staffing there at Rikers if you can’t get those people to get those shots? 

Mayor: We know just from everything we've seen previously, Jonathan, that people will come back. In the end, look, we’ve given people every opportunity. We really – the voluntary phase was very long, but now we're saying, we need you to do this, everyone else has done it, we need you to do it. And again, this is my message to mayors, this is my message to CEOs in the private sector. It's a very fair point now to say it's time – all the voluntary opportunities have been exhausted, now it's for mandates. And what we found is when people are really staring at a mandate and it's come to work, get paid, or don't come to work, don't get paid, the vast majority choose to get vaccinated and move forward.  

Geist: Mr. Mayor, Mika has got a question for you. Mika. 

Mika Brzezinski: Well, I guess the question, is it also going to the next mayor of New York City, especially if, as it portends to be Eric Adams, former NYPD officer, do you expect this all to continue through November and beyond? 

Mayor: Look, of course, I'll let Eric Adams speak for himself. I think very highly of him. I think he's going to be a great mayor, but he has publicly said previously that these mandates make sense. And I know he believes in treating every kind of worker the same. So, all those workers in health care, all of those workers in our schools, they went and got vaccinated. They abided by the mandate overwhelmingly. By the way, Mika, since we put the school's mandate in place, another 3,500 employees in our school system, who at first didn't get vaccinated, thought better of it, came back, got vaccinated, came back to their jobs. So, these mandates work. I think our mayor-to-be understands that. 

Geist: You’ve actually – you haven't gone so far, speaking of schools, as saying the kids should be mandated to have the vaccine. Eric Adams has said, if he's mayor, he will certainly look at that, and it's something he might be interested in doing. Is there a moment in your term here where you might change your mind on that and say, okay, it's been declared safe by the FDA, kids have to get vaccinated to be in schools? 

Mayor: I don't see it in my term – respect, whatever choice Eric Adams makes. But here's my problem, adults are my problem. Look, you got kids right now, 75 percent plus of our teenagers are vaccinated. That's great. But for the 25 percent who are not, it's not their choice. It's their parent's choice. They have to sign that consent. We're going to have the five- to 11-year-olds. Thank God that vaccine’s coming. That's going to be amazing. That's going to be a game changer for families to know our kids are safe. That's next month. But for every parent who says, ‘oh, no, I don't want to get my child vaccinated,’ I don't want to penalize that child by holding them out of school, especially if they went a year-and-a-half without being in the classroom. So, in the future, maybe it could be looked at, but for now, I don't want to hold, if you will, the sins of the parents against the children. Children need to be [inaudible] –  

Geist: As you say, the schools have been very safe so far – 

Mayor: Extraordinarily. 

Geist: Mike Barnicle wants to hop in here. Mike. 

Mike Barnicle: Mr. Mayor, as you just pointed out, you're a short termer – you have about nine weeks left as mayor of New York City, the greatest city in the world. You mentioned – you were talking about Rikers Island with Jonathan and Willie a few minutes ago. Rikers Island, in the sense for many who go there, many inmates, it's a death sentence. You can die of COVID. You can die of gang violence. And it's been going on not just for a month, not just this summer, for a long, long time. What has been the problem with either closing Rikers Island or getting something done to make it manageable?  

Mayor: We got to close it, Mike. It’s a very, very important point. We've got to close it. I got the plan passed to close it. The place has been there for 85 years. It's a bad relic of a bad past and the way we treated people incarcerated. We've got to end the era of mass incarceration, get rid of the facilities that were part of it. So, the plan we passed will close Rikers Island, create small community-based jails, places where you can actually do redemption. That's the way forward. Also, we ended solitary confinement, which was just destroying people's emotional status and making it much harder for people to be redeemed and move forward. So, there's a lot of big changes we got to do. That's the bottom line.  

Geist: So, Mr. Mayor, as Mike Barnicle put it, you are a short-termer now. Your term ends in about two-and-a-half months. Are you going to be running for governor next year in New York State? 

Mayor: You know, Jonathan, I've said I want to stay in public service. I really do. I think after this battle against COVID, I am feeling more energy than ever. We got to change a lot of things in this city, in this state, and I feel ready to serve. So, I'm certainly looking at all options. But in the meantime, I've got a job to do. Short-termer or not, this is one of the biggest moments in the history of the city fighting our way out of COVID once and for all. That's my focus. 

Geist: By when will you decide on a candidacy? 

Mayor: The election’s eight months away. So, I think it's fair to say anyone who's interested about race has to decide quickly. But the bottom line to me is I feel proud. Look, in this city, we did pre-K for every child. In this city, before the pandemic, we drove down crime six years in a row, improved the relationship between police and community. These are the things we have to do all over the city, all over the state, all over the country. And I want to keep serving the public. There's no question about that. 

Geist: It sounds like the beginning of a campaign speech. Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York City. Great to see you. Thanks for being here. 

Mayor: Thank you, Willie. 

Geist: I'd like to submit into the permanent record that Boston icon, Mike Barnicle, just declared New York, the greatest city in the world. 

Mayor: I think Mike – Mike is depressed about last night's Red Sox defeat, but, Mike, there's always today. We're coming back today.  

Barnacle: That's right. That's right, absolutely right.  

Mayor: Another grand slam tomorrow. That's my prediction. One more grand slam. 

Geist: We’ll see this afternoon. Thanks, Mr. Mayor. 

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