🌊 Roca’s Exclusive Interview with Mayor Adams

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By Max Towey and Max Frost

This NYC mayoral race has generated more buzz than any mayoral race since we started Roca. The contest transcends New York and involves issues every big city is facing: Cost of living, crime, and homelessness. It also exposes the massive rift in the Democratic Party between moderates and progressives.

We met Mayor Adams two weeks ago, when we interviewed him after the Midtown Manhattan shooting. Coming amid a crisis, we couldn’t discuss broader topics with him. This week, though, we sat down with him at City Hall for a wide-ranging 30-minute conversation. Among many topics, we discussed his corruption case, the migrant crisis, his allegations of a “deep state,” the rise of public drug use, and his thoughts on the Sydney Sweeney ad campaign. 

Before you send in your accusations of bias for only interviewing Mayor Adams and not Andrew Cuomo, Zohran Mamdani, or Curtis Sliwa, please know that we have reached out to each of their campaigns and hope to interview all of them. So far, none have replied. 

All that said, let’s get to the interview, which has been lightly edited for concision and clarity.

Max Towey: We saw that crime just hit a record low in New York. What’s been the secret to lowering it?

Mayor Adams: A number of things. Number one, you can’t have homicides by gun violence if people don’t have guns. And we took off the streets close to 23,000 illegal guns, 3,100 of them this year alone. And when I ran for office, I stated I was going to put in place a gun apprehension unit. And the combination of good smart policing, just heads up routine patrol going after hotspots, being clear on where gun violence is located and zooming in on that just allowed us to really remove these dangerous guns off our streets. 

Max Frost: One thing that we do notice a lot of now, though, is open drug use, even in nice neighborhoods. Walking to work, you see people shooting up. What is the city doing about that, and how has it become such an issue?

Mayor Adams: Yeah, it is an issue. We created what we call our Q team, our quality of life team, and they are going after quality of life issues: Open drug use, abandoned vehicles, illegal dumping, all of these things that make New Yorkers feel unsafe. It’s one thing to say, “Listen, we have the lowest number of shootings and homicides in the first six months of this year.” But people are not feeling safe. We’re now focusing on how people are feeling about their safety. 

Max Towey: I was talking to New York friends before today and asked them what they wanted to hear. The number one thing that came up was homelessness. There are a lot of crazy people on the subways. How do you crack down on that?

Mayor Adams: That’s a great question. And I hear that also. A couple of things: There are many frequent fliers who are just repeatedly in our system. If you pick up the paper, you read about someone shoving someone onto the subway track, and then you walk into your subway and you see someone undressed or with soiled clothing – human waste on them – yelling and screaming, now you connect that to what you saw or read. So you have a tendency to believe that, oh my God, these guys are all over the place and no one is doing anything about them, when in fact it’s not true. We are. We have put in place two programs that have been extremely successful…We send police officers out with mental health professionals and engage the people. We tried to get something called involuntary removal that would give us the authority to say, “You are a danger to yourself, a danger to others. We are going to involuntarily take you off the system and give you the care that you need.” The lawmakers would not give us that authority. I think it was a big mistake because I, like other commuters on our subway system, don’t want to see this every day. It plays on your psyche. 

Max Frost: You’ve been outspoken on these issues and public safety. But New York is a very progressive city, evidenced by Zohran’s popularity right now. Do you think progressive policies are undermining your mission?

Mayor Adams: Yes, I do. These policies sound good on paper, but they are terrible in practice. There’s a difference between idealism and realism. And, you know, that is something many people don’t understand. I think a perfect example is what you were talking about with people with mental health. Zohran wants to place shelters in our subway system for people with mental health issues. That sounds good, but it is not practical. Telling the police officer not to respond to a domestic violence incident, that’s one of the most dangerous jobs a police officer can go on…

Max Towey: On the subjects of public safety and Democratic discord, you were in the crosshairs of the DNC with your take on immigration. You saw hundreds of thousands of migrants come to New York City, which overwhelmed public housing and the city’s resources. And you called out the Biden Administration. We want to know what happened behind the scenes when you called the situation in New York a crisis. 

Mayor Adams: When I spoke with mayors across the country who were impacted by the migrant asylum seeker crisis, they all privately shared with me that what [the federal government is] doing to us is unfair. They were sending a national problem into local cities. And it was just so unfair because many of these cities – Chicago, Denver, Houston, and Los Angeles – were going through their own crises. The asylum seeker crisis cost us $7.7B. Now, some people would look at it and say, okay, the border is under control. Now, we’re not getting 4,000 migrants and asylum seekers a week anymore, 8,000 every two weeks, almost 16,000 a month, and 237,000 overall. But a city was essentially dropped into our city. We had to build a shelter system that should’ve been built in 40 years in less than a year. Now, not one family with children slept on the streets of the City of New York. 90% of those who came into our care, they are now taking the next step of their journey. But in the midst of that, in all of my conversations with the White House, including the president, there was a clear blind eye and deaf ear to the impact of our city and of other cities. 

And I strongly believe that because of my advocacy fighting for this city, I became the victim of lawfare. Because I wasn’t a good Democrat, they said, “We’re coming after you.” Many people never read the indictment, and I couldn’t speak about it because the case was still on. And lawyers would tell you, shut your mouth. That was hard for me because I’m a fighter and I’m used to fighting for myself. But I was indicted for calling the fire department and saying, “Can you go to a building inspection for the Turkish consulate because the president was coming here in a week? Can you go do a building inspection – not to pass them, not to do anything inappropriate – just go do the darn building inspection?” This is what lawmakers do. And so the creativity of the prosecutors, they said, “Well, you may have paid for flights on Turkish Airlines, but you got an upgrade.” People get upgrades all the time. They said, “We’re going to say that you were being bribed because you called and asked to do a building inspection.” 

And for leg room, I was facing 33 years in prison. 33 years in prison. And then when you add the same prosecutor who did this to me was the prosecutor that went after Brian Benjamin, the lieutenant governor. They brought him up on charges for receiving a contribution in his campaign from a legitimate person attached to a nonprofit. The judge dismissed the case before going to trial. The judge dismissed the case, but it destroyed his life. And so after this prosecutor resigned after the new administration came in, he opened a campaign website showing, “Hey, here are people I took down.” His whole desire appeared to have been to run for office, even at the expense of destroying careers of two prominent lawmakers in the city. 

And so President Biden said his Justice Department was politicized. President Trump said it. I said it, Brian said it. We all saw what happened. And countless other Americans who were just defending their families, including those who were worried about what their children were being taught in school. They were put on an FBI watch list! It was just wrong. And we’re finding out every day more and more information in burn bags. You know, more and more information. We’re finding out.

Max Frost: You sound a little bit like a conservative. And in the past, I’ve heard you talk about Kash Patel and his book “Government Gangsters” and the deep state. I know you’re running as an independent. Where do you find yourself politically now? I mean, do you still consider yourself a liberal?

Mayor Adams: First, I want to talk about Kash Patel’s book. In the midst of what I was going through, someone said you should read this book. And I read it. And when the charges were dropped against me, I told Americans you should read this book, because our criminal justice system can’t be hijacked. Many people realize the Southern District of New York stated that they are “sovereign.” Sovereign. You know, there is no sovereign entity in America! That can’t happen in America. So when you ask, where am I on a political spectrum? I am what I try to share to people all the time – I am an American. I just believe in the country. Sometimes I may have a conservative view on something. Sometimes I will have a liberal view of something. It depends on the topic. 

Max Towey: I want to hear your take on why Zohran is so popular. 

Mayor Adams: Well, first, let’s define popular. Around 9% of the voters voted. 2.5 million Democrats did not vote. A million independents did not vote. Several hundred thousand Republicans did not vote. And so he was popular in the Democratic primary among 1.1 million people. Our decision on who’s going to be mayor is in November. It’s not in June, it’s in November. And so what I must do right now is to go after those almost 4 million people. That’s a huge pool. They were not motivated enough to go out, come out for Mamdani. They were not motivated enough to come out for Cuomo and some of the other people who were running. Now I must motivate them. Given my history showing why Mamdani’s policies are dangerous for New York and the gang that he hangs out with, the DSA [Democratic Socialists of America]. The people at the DSA do not like our way of life. So we’re not only running against him, we’re running against an organization, an entity that does not like our way of life. Do we want to hurt small businesses by having government-run grocery stores to compete with small businesses and destabilize them? Do we want to go back on violence and defund our police department? Although, verbally, he now says he no longer believes that, he ran a campaign on that premise. 

Do we want to change the direction of our city? Those are the questions. I’m not in a city where I want to tell billionaires to leave because they pay a substantial amount of our taxes. I want the person who drives the limousine to be paid a respectable salary and have prosperity in the city, and I want the person that sits in the back of the limousine to be able to use their discretionary dollars and invest in our museums, in our streets, in our schools. That’s the financial ecosystem I believe in. I don’t want to demonize any part of the city because we’re in this together.

Max Frost: Governor Andrew Cuomo has said that he’s not on a “suicide mission,” and he will drop out of the race if he is trailing you in the polls. Have you spoken to Andrew Cuomo about what will happen ahead of the election? And do you believe that he would drop out and let you challenge Zohran head-to-head?

Mayor Adams: Cuomo is a professional distorter of reality. Think about this. He has put September as the drop-out date. The same amount of days before the primary, he was up 20 points! And then the day before the election, his campaign said he was up ten points in the poll. He lost by 13 points. So anyone that understands politics like he understands politics, he knows the last three weeks are the race! He just spent $25 million and lost by double digits. So to me, to run again is a suicide mission. So you can’t buy that scam. It’s a scam that he has created. He’s the best at creating the scams, tricks, and mirrors. He would put Houdini to shame.

Max Towey: Alright, let’s close with rapid-fire questions. There’s a viral debate right now. What are the four most relevant cities in America?

Mayor Adams: New York, New York, New York, and New York.

Max Towey: Who do you like better on a personal level, President Biden or Donald Trump?

Mayor Adams: I think both of them have positive attributes. I cannot thank President Trump enough for talking about what happened to me on the campaign trail and thanking him for highlighting that I was treated unfairly.

Max Frost: Do you have a take on the Sydney Sweeney American Eagle ad campaign?

Mayor Adams: I think that we’ve become too politically correct that, you know, men are ashamed to be handsome and women ashamed to be feminine. We need to get away from that madness. You know, she should be happy with how she looks. And whatever campaign she wants to do to express that, more power to her.

Editor’s Note

Thanks for reading today’s interview. We’re hoping to interview Zohran soon as well. What are your thoughts? What policies would you want to see cities implement to become safer and more affordable? Let us know by replying to this email.

Here are a few replies to yesterday’s story on the rise of debanking.

Stacy wrote:

Ryan wrote:

And Paul from Delaware wrote:

And if you haven’t read them yet, find our latest stories here:

• Inside the Rise of Debanking

• The Great American Credit Card Divide

• America's Favorite Mayor

• Tucker Carlson's CIA Ties

• Is the US Getting Ripped Off?

We’ll be back tomorrow with an on-the-ground report from Akron, Ohio. In the meantime, enjoy your Saturdays. 

–Max and Max