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

November 9, 2021

Mika Brzezinski: Alright. Joining us now, the Mayor of New York City, Bill de Blasio. Thank you so much for being on this morning. And by the way, thank you for coming last night to my mother's event. It was absolutely lovely, and your words were ever so kind, I could not have been more moved. And you and Joe are like expert ribbon-cutters. So, you guys have done that before. 

Joe Scarborough: It’s a skill. It's a real skill. 

Mayor: Joe, your form was excellent. I just want to say – 

Brzezinski: Mr. [inaudible] – 

Willie Geist: The giant scissors are important. 

Scarborough: The giant scissors are great. I followed the Mayor who said, okay, everybody stop, look at the camera – 

Mayor: Get focused – 

Scarborough: Like you’ve done it before. 

Mayor: And look at that form. 

Scarborough: Raise the scissors high – 

Mayor: In triumph – 

Brzezinski: This was for the New York Institute of Technology, which we opened an exhibit and a new gallery there yesterday, a student center. And my mother's huge cherry bench, made out of one tree trunk, is in the window there on Broadway, right near the Lincoln Center. So, you can walk by and see it and students can enjoy it. And we celebrated her body of work and our thanks to the New York Institute of Technology, Susanne Musho and Dr. Hank Foley for having us. And thank you, Mr. Mayor. 

Mayor: And, Mika, look, when you told the story of your parents sitting on that bench and the bond they had – how many years together? 

Brzezinski: For 64 years. 

Mayor: 64 years. 

Brzezinski: And they sat on that bench every evening, spring, summer, and fall, on our property in McLean, Virginia, and would just look out into the meadow and just be together. It's really nice. 

Mayor: Yeah, it is. It's true. Your family – it's just amazing, what your family has done for this country in so many ways. Now, multiple generations more to come more – 

Scarborough: More to come – 

Brzezinski: And he includes you – 

Scarborough: [Inaudible] I said he’s pretty good too. 

[Laughter] 

Scarborough: From architect of the world to cable news desk. It goes down. So, Mr. Mayor, as we were going to the event, I was struck, it was as if someone turned the light switch on. I was struck by how packed New York City was. When I, you know – when Willie and I are in the subway or when we're in the taxi, we're going around in the cabs and talk, everybody always says, well, it'll fill up again, New York City, when the tourists come back from overseas. Well, they came back and you can see it yesterday, just packed. 

Mayor: It's unbelievable, Joe. We had the marathon on Sunday, which was a great comeback.  

Scarborough: Willie ran that. 

Mayor: I remember, I remember – 

Scarborough: And he's going to run the Boston Marathon now.  

Mayor: Willie, a triumph of the human spirit. 

Brzezinski: Truly. 

Geist: And so you're – not to, just talk about the city for a minute – to see our city from that vantage point, starting on the Verrazzano Bridge and running through Brooklyn, it truly brings tears to your eyes to watch the neighborhoods and watch the signs change from English to Spanish, to Arabic, to, you know, Mandarin. And to just get that view of the city and to think about the police and the firefighters and the organization that went into pulling that off, it really – it's the reason I finished because of this city. It was beautiful. 

Scarborough: [Inaudible] signs you will read in south Boston, but go ahead. 

Brzezinski: Yes – 

Mayor: I love that you say that because that's also why this city has come back from COVID. It's the human factor. It's resiliency. It's the passion, the compassion of the people in this city. And now marathon on Sunday, international travelers come back Monday, tens of thousands already. What we're seeing is this city has come back to life because we got vaccinated. I mean, we've got to remember why it was possible – 

Scarborough: What's the percentage of New Yorkers who have been vaccinated? 

Mayor: This is amazing, among adults we're at 87 percent. Among our public employees – because we did a mandate – 93 percent. That has made us the safest place to be. So, here's the breaking news. We now have the highest level of bookings for the time between Thanksgiving and New Years, with both U. S. travelers and international travelers. Number one, destination, New York City, because it's a safe place to be and it's a magical time of year work. 

Brzezinski: And mandates work. 

Mayor: Mandates work. And there's going to be noise and there's going to be conflict, and you're going to have to hold your ground if you believe in a mandate. But listen, we're seeing it in the proof. People respond to a decision, a clear, straightforward decision. And in the end, folks went and got vaccinated. They got vaccinated, life went on, but it's allowed everything else now to come back. The offices are filling up again. The restaurants are full. The tourists are coming back. We couldn't have done it without the vaccine mandate.  

Scarborough: You know there's a thing, Willie – people have been trying to turn this into something that it is not for a long time. But when we were talking about acting responsibly a year ago people would be screaming about, oh, well, you know, these businesses are shut down. Well, that's the whole thing. Like you want people to be able to go to the small businesses, the family restaurants, the hardware stores, all of the places in your hometown. You want them to be able to go back there and not have what we've seen in other parts of the country. Stop, start, stop, start, stop, start. And nobody – it seems that certain people just didn't figure out that this health care crisis was an economic crisis, but the economic crisis within the health care crisis within – and look at New York City. 

Geist: Yeah, we've been talking about this for a year-and-a-half, the complaints about violations of freedom with mask mandates and social distancing and schools being closed, were totally upside down, which [inaudible] path to freedom is let's get through this month or whatever it is with masks and social distancing. Then the other side of it [inaudible] –  

Mayor: [Inaudible] tourists. And then, again, finding out we’re the number one destination by the bookings. We now have the facts that people want to be here. And folks have been waiting years now to come back. I think that's going to supercharge this recovery. And I think what it says, your point about freedom is very powerful, powerful that – you know, what is freedom? Freedom is the ability to go out there and live your life, have your job, be with the people you love. We were deprived of that for most of two years. And vaccination actually gave us back that freedom. And I think people are going to realize as they see these mandates work, wait a minute, that's actually the thing we wanted.  

Scarborough: Yeah. 

Brzezinski: Okay. So, you know, speaking of those reunions, it's going to bring you memories of your favorite movie. Okay. But Tom Costello has a look at some of the first travelers coming finally to see loved ones here in America. Take a look. 

[...] 

Scarborough: It's very – they're very moving, but you're right, Jonathan Lemire, nothing there reminded me of any scenes out of old school [inaudible] –   

Jonathan Lemire: [Inaudible]  

Brzezinski: [Inaudible] I walked out of Wedding Crashers –  

Geist: A little Love Actually, there. 

Brzezinski: Love Actually, which is your favorite movie. 

Scarborough: No, it's not – 

Brzezinski: Yes – 

Scarborough: It's a good movie. 

Brzezinski: You love that movie. How many times have you seen it? 

Geist: [Inaudible] movie. 

Scarborough: But it's not, You've Got Mail, which I saw the other night again, teared up again. I thought about our dear friend, Nora Ephron.  

Brzezinski: I love her.  

Scarborough: Oh my God. I know. I know. I miss her so much. But, yeah, so that's great. So, so Governor, there we go – 

Brzezinski: Wait, wait, wait. Wait a minute.  

[Crosstalk] 

Scarborough: So, governor – whatever. So, Mr. Mayor – 

Brzezinski: Might you – 

Scarborough: But, well, hold on just for a second.  

Brzezinski: Okay. 

Scarborough: So, what do people have to do to get here when they come from overseas, when they come from Europe [inaudible] rest of the world? 

Mayor: Yeah, look, it is simple. I mean, being vaccinated, it gets you on that flight, gets you into our restaurants, gets you into Broadway. I mean Broadway's full, it's beautiful. People are coming from all over, back to go to the Broadway shows that are unlike anything in the world. 

Brzezinski: Safely. 

Mayor: Safely. And by the way, this is really important. The employees, all the good folks who work on Broadway, the actors, the folks behind the scene, they've been safe the whole way through. And that has sustained Broadway. The mandates not only help the folks coming to see the show, they help all the good folks who work on the show and keep the show going.  

Lemire: Yeah. So, on vaccines, Mr. Mayor, my children ages 10 and seven vaccinated last night, first shots – 

Mayor: Congratulations. 

Lemire: Super excited about that. Thank you. But obviously there's still ongoing discussions with some of the labor unions. Not all have signed on. Give us an update as to where things stand, what public service workers who have still not been vaccinated, and also your message to the incoming mayor who has not committed to keeping these mandates when he takes office on January 1st. 

Mayor: Look, I think Eric Adams has been clear that he believes in a strong approach to vaccination. And, obviously, what we're all looking forward is to the day when we end the COVID era, and we can start to normalize. And I think he's spoken about that too, getting us to that point, to his credit. But the bottom line is, overwhelmingly, the unions have now agreed that this is happening, they've got to work with it. We have 23 unions that have signed on to an approach to make sure that vaccinations happen that are fair to working people. It's been a huge success, 93 percent of the workforce, for God's sakes, and a lot more will come in. 

Scarborough: Yeah, we saw an article that talked about how children being vaccinated and then, I guess, the Pfizer pill may actually move us closer to an end game. 

Mayor: That's right. That's right. Look, vaccination is the thing we have now. And we can still do a lot more to maximize it. We want to – we're out in schools today, vaccinating kids in schools. We think that parents are going to come in droves to get their kids to be safe. Keep moving on those adults we haven't reached yet. And then treatments are coming. So, that changes the whole ballgame. 

Elise Jordan: I do have one question, are teachers in New York City required to be vaccinated? 

Mayor: Yes, absolutely. 

Jordan: So, now that is a vaccine mandate for them because I know it was contentious. Friends would have children going to school with unvaccinated teachers. 

Mayor: And when – it's so interesting, you said that because it was contentious until it wasn't. You put down the mandate –- and this is what I think is going to happen on the federal level as well. God bless President Biden for what he is doing. The mandates happen, people accept it, they see it makes people safe, they go on. Parents know their kids are safe when they go to school. We needed that to get every child back to school. After a year-and-a-half, a lot of kids had not seen a classroom. They were suffering for it. When parents knew all the adults in the building were vaccinated, it encouraged them to bring their kids back.  

Geist: Mr. Mayor, big picture question for you. When a new president is elected, there's a lot of talk about, you aspire to this job and of course you want the job and you come into the office, you're sworn in on January 20th, then you go into the oval and you get your first daily brief and the threat assessment you go, whoa, I didn't realize what was going on behind the curtain. So, what is your advice to the Mayor-elect, Eric Adams, about the job of running New York City. 

Mayor: Expect the unexpected. You know, it is exactly what you described. Any one of us think we have a picture of it going in the door until you get there. And then challenge after challenge, crisis after crisis. No one in a thousand years could have told me we would have had this kind of pandemic and everything that would have gone with it. If you had said that to me, Willie, eight years ago, when I was preparing to take office, I’d say, oh, come on, that couldn't happen here. But it did. And so many other unexpected things. You know, what we're seeing with the climate crisis and extreme weather. So, a mayor, a governor, or president nowadays has to be ready for absolutely anything and be ready to make sudden adjustments. Sometimes you take the game plan you started with, you have to put that aside real quick because the world changes quickly nowadays.  

Brzezinski: All right, Mayor Bill de Blasio, thank you for everything. 

Mayor: Thank you. Congratulations, Mika, and to your mom. 

Brzezinski: Yes. Yay, Mom. Yay [inaudible] – 

Scarborough: And come back soon –  

Mayor: Absolutely. 

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