Hello and welcome to another episode of the OddLotss podcast. I'm Joe Weisenthal

and I'm Tracy Aloway. Tracy, we have a special episode of the podcast today which needs very little introduction, but we are speaking uh to the mayor.

I love our transition to local city reporters.

Thank you. Thank you. I think this is my second time this week or was it last week? The days go to fast, but it's great here being at Bloomberg.

It's f Thank you so much. I read an article recently from the journalist Derek Thompson. He was talking about the death of partying in America. People apparently don't party as much as they used to. New York City people still party, but like, you know, there aren't as many 24-hour clubs as they used to be. Apparently, there's fewer 4 a.m. liquor licenses, etc. You're a man who appreciates night life and partying. What happened? Why don't people party as much as they used to?

Great question. And first of all, is why do I appreciate the night life? It's a $30 billion industry

and we viewed the city often as mayors we viewed it as 9 to5 but it's not. When I was a police officer I work overnights midnights and when I go into a night life a restaurant I walk in the kitchen kitchen I talk to the dishwasher. I talk to the bus boy or girl. Those are everyday workingass people. And I knew when I came back after co I had to turn our night life around. And we did that. You can't get reservations in the city anymore. Broadway had the best 12 months in the history of the city. And part of coming back out at night is what is our signature? New York, the city that

there's no party crisis.

No, it's not.

Still shuts down earlier than it used to.

No, it does. And and part of the problem I believe you have far too many people on community boards that have been for a long time and they're not connecting the economics with their desire really not to have any night life. Night life is important of the community. It's allowed to let off some steam networking uh really uh collaborating. Listen, you come to New York, you're going to find your mate here because the diversity of this great city.

I wanted to ask about some other specific policy proposals, specifically housing and you know I went to your website and I I saw the sort of summary of your proposals and then I clicked into learn more

and it took me to your previous accomplishments under your first term. So I'm really curious if you could maybe broaden out some of your housing policies like what exactly are you talking about here?

Well, first let's let's look at the fact that when you look at shovels in the ground and what we're proposing in our resoning, including the most comprehensive housing reform in the history of the city, 60 years previously was the first time we really started looking at housing and some of the reform. We're going to build more housing in one term than the 12 years under Bloomberg, the eight years under Delasio combined in one term. And $25 billion we're putting into our 10-year capital plan.

In addition to that, for the first time in history, we are including NICHA uh uh housing into the plan. So, we we're looking at a couple of different locations. Number one, we saw the federal and state government walk away from NICHA. Uh Nicha has a $88 billion dollar capital problem. We had to find new ways of building on NICHA. We did the land trust. Many people tried, we got it done. Uh we're also doing the RAD programs. Many people have attempted to do it. We got it done. The amazing project that we are getting ready to do in Reese houses where we're going to tear down old buildings, build new buildings, and without zero displacement of tenants. That's how we deal with the Nicha issue.

Then we realized that if we want to build more housing, we have to build everywhere. It was unbelievable how many elected officials were stopping that building. 59 community boards, 10 of those 59 were building more affordable housing than 49 combined. So our goal now is to build all over the city. And that's what city of Yes was about a little more housing in every community that we could allow residents and tenants to stay in their community instead of leaving the city. So our goal in the future as we move forward with forward we want to build faster. We want to build more. Drive by Willis Point right now 2400 units of affordable housing that's there. New soccer stadium that's paid private dollars a new school new open space. And you see the buildings actually going up in the same term. So our focus is building more and build building everywhere.

The first time I ever heard about controversy at the Elizabeth Street Garden was in 20 2018, I think. And then now it's 2025 and you've come out and you said, "Okay, like let's move on. Let's not continue to fight this." But setting aside whether it was it's right to use that space for housing or not. Like setting aside these questions, why does it take seven years or longer to come to answers on these questions?

Great question. And if you if you do an analysis over all the things that we've done, we've land pl we landed planes that no one else was able to do. When you rid all the noise, take all the noise out of the administration and just say, "Okay, let's look at the raw numbers." Like you said, your your listeners are sophisticated. Look at the raw numbers. Uh we were able to land a plane on Governor Governor's Island. We were able to land a plane in Sunset Sunset Park. We're able to land the plane on these difficult tasks. So what did we do when we brought in Randy Mastro as the first deputy mayor? He was he looked at it. He says, "How can we leverage this space? How could we walk away with a win?" We did. Uh Elizabeth Street Garden was going to do about 125 units of housing. 120 units. We're going to get 625

units of housing. And we got elsewhere after years of fighting about it.

Yes. This is New York. Let's let's be clear about this city. Wherever you try to do, we got 8.5 million people. We have 35 million opinions. You know, you always going to have New Yorkers, no matter what you attempt to do, but how do we leverage the best Florida city? So, we took the concerns of Elizabeth Street Garden. People were concerned about that. They wanted to hold on to the garden and I said, "You got to give me a plan that I could deal with the number one crisis I have in this city, and that is housing." and we were able to leverage that space and walk away with over 600 additional units of affordable housing. That's a win no matter how you how you how you talk about it.

What's the broad lesson from that experience? Because when we were talking about nightlife just then, you know, it sounds like community groups and special interest groups are still an impediment or an obstacle to some of the things that you seem to want to do. Is there anything you're thinking about to maybe like encourage more cooperation, build up that city of yes idea?

Yes. And you know what we witness in the city uh particularly in our elected officials? Our elected officials on Monday they say housing is right, but on Tuesday they say not in my district. We don't want to hear.

And if I walked away with anything in the last 3 years and seven months is that you have to ignore the noise. You have to do what's best long term for the city and it's a retrospective appreciation of and if you do an analysis not only in housing look how far I was away from where uh the noise of the leadership of Democratic party when I was take talking about taking uh severe mental health illness off our streets I got a unbelievable push back when I talk about investing in the police department when others were talking defund the police uh everyone was pushing back and now we see record levels of decrease and crime. Uh when I was talking about the cannabis fight uh that we had to do something about it. So when you look at where I was even in housing, everyone was pushing back on city of Yes. And today all came to where we were. And when you live these experiences, you have a different eyesight than others. And so uh what I want for my local community groups and organizations is to understand we're in the city together. And far too often, uh folks said that listen, I have my backyard. I have my park. I have all that I want. I don't want any additional people here. But if you do that, then you're going to hurt the long-term plan of this city.

So, your main opponent in this uh race has made affordability the sort of cornerstone. And you've talked about obviously the expansion of affordable housing in New York City under your administration, which is real.

Nonetheless, New York City is a crazy expensive place to live.

Yes.

I think it's worth it cuz I think it's the best city in the world. So, it's like, you know what? I'll pay the uh high cost of housing here because I love New York City. But do we just have to accept, you know, sort of in the same way you said, okay, you know, New York's always going to have 35 million opinions for 8.5 million residents. That's New York City. Do we just all have to accept that the city has to be incredibly expensive?

No. No, we we don't. And what government must do is utilize their powers to help workingclass people. And when you think about it, that's what we have done. We put $30 billion back into workingclass people. And we looked at what is driving the cost. Number one, as we talked, affordable housing was one area. And we're doing that. We're building it. We break breaking records. Year 1, year two, and year three, we build more affordable housing individual years than any other administration in history. But look at the other areas. Uh what's the number one cause of bankruptcy? Medical debt. We are excusing medical debt for low-income New Yorkers, foster care children, 600 to 700 age out every year. They slip through the cracks. They don't get the support that they deserve. We're paying their college tuition and we're giving them life coaches until they're 21 instead of aging out at 18. So, they don't slip through the cracks.

Or what hurts women the most, but families in particular, child care. We dropped the cost of child care from $220 a week to less I a month to less than $20 a month. We were the first one in 20 years to drop the earning uh to increase the earned income tax credit. We're paying for highspeed broadband in lowincome housing in Niger and other uh low local in the process. Reduce the cost of using our subway system for lowincome New Yorkers. So the real message is I can't handle the price of bread, but I could put bread back in the pockets of New Yorkers. And we've done it at the sum of $30 billion. So it's easy to talk about pie in the sky ideas that that is not within the span of the control of the mayor like free buses. Free buses uh is a $3 billion price tag. And if you're stating that the foundation of your plan is based on increasing taxes on high 1% earnest when in fact you don't have the authority to do that. You know who has the authority? Assemblymen.

My opponent is an assemblyman. If he couldn't get it done as the assemblyman, how is he going to get it done as a mayor? Particularly when the governor who signs off on it stated that she's not raising income taxes. New York City is the highest income tax in the country. The state is the highest in the country. And so what I did put money back in the pockets. Do you know there's no no income tax for low-income New Yorkers in the city because of my ax to tax? That is how you look at the power of the mayor's office and say, "How do I help workingclass people?" I'm blown away that he has hijacked the narrative of being a working-class mayor and putting money back in affordability issue when I've done it. That's my record is clear on putting money back in the pockets of working-class people.

Since we're talking about your opponent's policies, Zoran Mdani, you've said that New Yorkers don't understand what socialism is. Can you give us your definition of socialism? Like what is socialism to you?

Well, first I would say this. 70% of New Yorkers like the theme and concept of socialism. Socialism. And many people if you were to ask uh they would tell you they never been to a socialist country. I've been to a communist and socialist country. I've been to Venezuela. I've been to Cuba. I know where Rational uh books are. Uh I think it is the concept that you're going to take uh money from one area of the population and equal it out across the board and many governmentrun loces and facilities such as supermarkets. Now, when you do that in in in concept, it sounds good. But if you open a governmentrun supermarket, you're gonna kill the bodega industry. you're going to kill the independent supermarket industries. So I think the whole concept of believing as though uh resources from the top end that those who believe that we should not have any billionaires in this city uh which I just don't it doesn't balance out because when you look at where the tax dollars come from and spreading spreading the wealth if you want to use that classification across the entire entire uh population that doesn't work for me has never worked anywhere on the globe. There's not one country we can point to that says that this concept has been successful.

I mean, we do have progressive taxes though. You just said that lower income New Yorkers don't have to pay New York tax. So, there is an element of that here. Like, is there a point at which it's too much or like what exactly is the issue?

When you say it's too much, explain it to me more.

Like, is there a point at which the redistributive effects

flips into socialism?

Yeah. Flips into socialism.

Well, I I think so. I think there's a balance. And I like to say all the time, I want the person who drives the limousine to get a fair wage and be able to provide for his family. And I want the person that sits in the back seat of the limousine to be able to use his discretionary dollars or her discretionary dollars. When you look at the billionaires in this city that everyone wants to demonize, they're the ones who pay into their philanthropic actions into our museums. They're the ones that sponsor like the Robin Hood Foundation to deal with where people are slipping through the cracks. Uh they're the ones in their tax dollars are paying for our teachers and our firefighters and those who are on the low economic end. That perfect financial ecosystem is what makes a city like this great.

So if your position is that particularly in an atmosphere where you now could run your organizations and entities outside the city, you can easily go to Connecticut, New Jersey or Miami, which we lost a great deal of high income earners. If your position is we don't want you here in our city, ideally that's attractive to people to hear we're getting rid of all the billionaires. But when you drill down in the numbers, those billionaires are keeping the lights on. And because we have billionaires, we're able to do things like ask the tax for the working class.

Going back to something you said earlier, you're talking about federal funding, federal support for NICHA, the public housing. Should any mayor of New York City currently um should the mayor have a oppositional relationship with Trump? A lot of people want that. A lot of people want the mayor to stand as a bull work to some extent against Trump's policy. You obviously uh benefited from the fact that he uh dropped charges or his DOJ dropped charges against you. There's been cooperation uh in terms of ICE on Rikers. How do you think about the fact that whether you know this sort of sort of uh yeah dempifying New York City for both the citizens and also undocumented residents? You know, the most dangerous thing that being a mayor mayor during this time is people read headlines and not the full scope, you know, and that's unfortunate.

Uh, when you think about it, sometimes you tell a lie long enough, it becomes the truth. And when you look at the definition of the relationship I I have with the current president, everyone is ignoring the relationship I have with President Biden. I call myself the Biden of Brooklyn. Everyone

I watched that video. I saw that I saw that clip. I've watched it like 10

times. I'll have to uh because we had a good relationship and I like the president. Do I believe there were those in his administration that participated in lawfare? He actually said it. He said his justice department uh was politicized when he pardoned his son. He knew what was happening there. But Biden came to the city and spent the whole day with me when I was dealing with law enforcement issues and we didn't have an ATF head, someone to be in charge of the uh alcoh alcohol, tobacco um and firearms. And he appointed someone, he visited my crisis management teams. He sat down and spoke with me about going after violence, which was the issue that I ran on.

And so the same to goes to for this president. I didn't know Donald Trump. A lot of people don't realize that. I didn't know him until I met him at the uh Alfred E. Smith dinner and he spoke with me. He was on the campaign trail prior to even meeting me saying it's wrong what they doing to this mayor uh in New York in New York City. And he he saw what was happening and when he came into office, the same things I was saying about dangerous migrants and asylum seekers pre-election, I was saying post election. And when I walked out of the voting booth on election day and the microphone was in my face and they said, "Who did you vote for?" I said, "VP Harris." I was very clear. You know, did I disagree with what I saw the Democratic party was doing? Yes. But I still remained uh loyal to do what was what I thought was right to do.

So when you fast forward to today, u we took the administration to court more than any other mayor in the country. No other mayor has gone to court as much as I have pushing back on the policies. But when we needed the president of the United States to look at a project we had in Sunset Park or Windfall, billions of dollars investment of 500,000 homes were going to use the energy 1,500 union jobs. I flew to Washington and sat down with the president and said, "Mr. President, we can't have this this this project destroyed." He lifted the stop work order. That project is now moving forward. That's what mayors of big cities are supposed to do. Now, I can pout in the corner and just call the president names and say, "Well, you know what? People are upset over the outcome of the election." But how does that help New York?

How does it help New York to communicate and coordinate to go after dangerous people? We have a We had dangerous Venezuelan gangs in the city. They were forcing women who are migrants and undocumented into prostitution. I coordinated with federal authorities. We took down the 27 gang members. We were able to for for gun possession and other dangerous crimes. So, it is my job as the mayor of the biggest city in America to sit down and not war with the president, but work with the president to deliver for the people of this city.

This is the perfect segue for me to ask something that might seem slightly random, but actually I think it's relevant because you've recommended before that New Yorkers should read Cash Patel's book, All About the Deep State.

Yes.

What do you think about the Trump administration's refusal to release the Epstein files?

I would love to see what's in those Epstein files. You know, I think we all do. You know, I'm I'm eager to look at UFOs. You know, I'm there's so many history. I'm still trying to figure out who kid Kennedy. uh you know

well that was another theory for like what's going on here because a lot of people are really confused because for years this was a

it was a campaign promise basically.

Yeah. And then suddenly it's like it's a hoax. What do you do you have a you have a you have a guess for what's going on here?

Not at all. Uh I don't know if his advisers security personnel uh advised otherwise or timing I don't I have no idea. Uh I look forward to seeing there's so many deep secrets in America that I think we all want to know and it's imperative that as much as we can find out as possible and I want to talk about cash C cash's book which I thought was a good book. Uh people laugh at the terminology of a deep state. Uh but it is we have people in government who have been in government through presidents through mayors through governors and they're very arrogant. They believe they are the elected. They believe they answer to no one. They believe that they are able to hold up projects that they don't like. And I saw that firsthand uh as the mayor. And they're connected to reporters. They're connected to uh prosecutors and they're connected to be able to they write a letter on you in a minute. They get a story planted on in a minute and leaks. And I saw it and how it operates.

Now think about this for a moment. Everybody let it go over their head. The Southern District of New York classified themselves as sovereign. I mean, we need to really think about that as sovereign. There's no sovereign entities in America. Everyone responds to someone. If you believe you have to report to no one, even Maine Justice, you could do whatever you want. That's unacceptable. And that should outrage every American that any entity with that level of prosecutoal power that can really disrupt your life. You know, people didn't read my indictment. I was indicted for calling the fire department asking them to do a building inspection, not to pass

what I ran on. I ran on making the FDNY respond to businesses that could not open. and they connected it to, well, you had a bunch of of upgrades when when you paid for your travel and we're going to now turn that into bribery and we're gonna put you in jail for 33 years. Come on.

I want to go back to uh ICE for a second. I take your point absolutely about violent criminals and the need to address them whether they're uh migrants or not. But obviously, you know, there's ICE raids happening across the country, including nonviolent but undocumented migrants. New York City has a long history of being a self-desated sanctuary city. M setting aside the sort of violent criminal element, what is the degree to which you know this is going to continue presumably going forward at least through the rest of the Trump administration. What is the degree to which you're inclined to cooperate with the administration on nonviolent undocumented migrants?

We don't we're very clear and as you mentioned this city is a sanctuary city and understand sanctuary city is not a law. It is a belief that we believe in this city. If you're in New York and you buy a bottle of water and you pay taxes on that, those taxes go to your goods and services. So, in this city, if you are documented or not, we don't question you on that. You could go get medical assistance if you need it. Your child will be able to go to school. You can call the police if you're a victim of a crime. You could make sure that you could walk the streets of the city of New York. And that is what our entire belief system is. We will never cooperate or collaborate with ICE on civil enforcement. That is against the law. We never done and we never will.

We will coordinate with them when it comes down to criminal enforcement because we need to be very clear on this and I think this has been distorted. ICE is not a criminal organization. People could dislike. I don't like the IRS taking money out of my pockets, but it's still a federal agency and it's needed to make sure our tax dollars are collected and spent. ICE is not a criminal organization. ICE is a federal law enforcement agency. Our city has determined that parts of their duties we are not allowed to collaborate with. We respect that and we never will. But I'm going to collaborate with law enforcement agencies, HSI, FBI, ICE, uh, when it comes down to keeping this city safe. These gangs were extremely dangerous. And you had others who were committing real crimes in this city. And I don't care if you're documented or undocumented. After 22 years of being in the law enforcement community, I'm going to keep New Yorkers safe.

But isn't ISIS's definition of a crime that includes basically anyone who entered the country illegally? Right. That's the problem. They're not distinguishing between gang members, violent criminals, and people that, you know, are just trying to work.

Great question. Because it's a it's a it is a crime to enter and remain. That's a crime.

We don't collaborate on that. Okay.

because it's clear in our law that uh certain even crimes of that nature we will not collaborate in. And so when it comes down to that level of crimes we will not collaborate. We're very clear on what we will collaborate. But I also want to point this out because it's often ignored. I'm off uh someone is always pointing a mic in my face and saying hey Eric what are you what are you going to do about u what um ISIS doing? That's a federal agency. I think we're get we're allowing our federal electors off the hook. I don't control the rules of the federal agencies. I don't have I I I have the city council. That's my job to look at laws to sign their laws. You know, we're not asking our federal partners enough. Hey guys, what are you doing about this? That's not my job. The enforcement of immigration is a federal authority, not a city authority. I'm going to do my job. I don't control who come across the border. I control who's in the city when they are across the border.

And I and I told President Biden this. I said, "Listen, we have a poorest border." I went down to El Paso. I went down to the Darian Gap to uh Ecuador, uh Colombia, uh Mexico, and I saw the flow, and I saw how they were telling people the streets are paved with gold in New York. Why don't we control the flow? We have serious uh population issues across our country. We should be allowing people to come into the country and say, "Hey, Kentucky need backstretch workers in the racing industry. Here's where you're going for three years and then you could go wherever you want in the country." This is a win-win if we handle it better. We had no control at the border. We were allowing anyone to come through. Now that we see a substantial decrease, we're no longer get longer getting 4,000 people a week into this into this city, which was just not sustainable.

Speaking of crime, the crime stats have improved a lot in the last couple of years. The rat I've been monitoring your war on rats.

He's a single issue voter on the rat.

I've been very impressed with the war on rats and I've looked at the stats on 311 calls for rats, etc. Very good. On the other hand, the city is still dirty. When I take my kids to the park, only half the time can I expect to be able to not even half like find a clean bathroom, elevators at the subway, still like, you know, it's this is a worldass city. Do we just have to again sort of going back to the thing like is this inevitable that a city like New York City has to have it so that we don't even have clean bathrooms most of the time? Like speaking like from a family issue like public childare obviously incredibly important but there's all these other things that make it much more difficult I would think than it needs to be that I feel like everyone has just come to accept like yeah we can't have clean bathrooms in a public park and

I I agree with you 100%. I would never accept a city where there's disorder there's chaos and there's dirt. I just don't remember when I came into office many people don't realize that we had encampments in our subway system. It was the worst of the COVID pandemic. But

yeah, all over.

We had on long highways. I my January and February, I went out and there's still pictures that someone sent me the other day. I went out and visited people that were living in encampments and I saw that when I walked in and crawled in their encampments and their boxes and their tents. I saw stale food, human waste, drug palia. Many of them was dealing with schizophrenic behavior, bipolar. And I went back to the team and said, "We can't the city can't live this way. Go look at Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland. Go look at these other cities. You don't see that here because I had a zero tolerance. And once we dealt with the encampments, once we dealt with the crimes, u removing 22,000 illegal guns off our streets, 100,000 ghost vehicles, illegal vehicles that were running our streets, on we once we dealt with that, now we move into the next lay layer. uh we've immediately went after the the the rodents in our city which was just really an indicator of just total uh uncleanliness in the city. Now we put in place a 1,200 person quality of life team, our Q team we call it, that's going after those nagging issues.

I still run ride around the streets 1 a.m. 2 am in the morning call on my commissioners when I see an encampment or I see overflow trash they all tell you about those horrific calls that they get from me because we should see it before you see it. You deserve a clean bathroom. You deserve to be able to go to a park where there's no trash on there. You deserve to not have to worry about a rodent running across your feet. You know, this is what you deserve. These are the basic things that we deserve. But we had to deal with the level one issue first, dealing with getting us out of COVID, dealing with crime, and then this un unexpected uh uh crisis of dealing with the migrants and asylum seekers. You know, people tell us all the time that uh okay, Eric, you have to the migrant asylum seekers behind you. Uh everything is okay. It's not. We spent $7.7 billion. 500 million of that should have gone to chronically absent children. A billion should have gone to building housing for our seniors. A billion should have gone to making sure that we um boost up our department of sanitation. What I'm trying to share, the long-term rep repercussions of what we experience is going to have long-term impacts on our city

on the quality of life issues and crime.

I got to say practically every time I'm in Broadway and Lafayette, the station, which is pretty often,

there are people shooting up in the corner. I literally went down the stairway the other day and a guy was standing there shooting himself up in the arm and I was three inches away from him. That was uncomfortable. That happens all the time and no one seems to be doing anything about it. What exactly is the obstacle to improving some of these issues? Is it budget? Is it enforcement? What is it?

You know, and and I hate it. I hate it when I see someone uh what we call nodding on the street. Exactly. when I see someone. We were up at the hub the other day. Uh was just a state of total disrepair until we got in there and zoomed in. We put in place what we call our uh path team and our scout teams. And I spent a lot of time in the subway system and the goal is how do you talk people off the system? Now, we were able to take 8,500 people off our system that was living on our system. But I cannot tell you how much a challenge it is dealing with people who uh dealing with severe mental health issues. They don't know they need care. Uh that is why I was trying to get Albany to pass the involuntary removal bill because there are people who are harmful to themselves and harmful to others and we have to take them inside. We have to bring them inside. And many people just have a philosophical disagreement with me on this issue. Uh, I want to say that if if you are using drug use, we need to take you inside. If you are 30°ree weather, you you don't have on shoes, you you know, you have saw your clothing, you're yelling and screaming. I we have to talk them off the ledge now and hope that they after building trust and the scout team are doing an amazing job, but it it takes longer and you see those repeated offenders over and over again. Uh but our goal is to go after and it's illegal to shoot up drugs in public. Uh but when you do a real crackdown, you get a lot of heat that we're criminalizing drugs cuz drugs is, you know, um addiction is a disease. So we're trying to use the right balance, but we are far more uh encountering people than others would like us to do. We get a lot of complaints because we encounter people who are injecting themselves with drugs, people who are dealing with severe mental health illness. And I got to really ignore that noise for the better public overall public safety of the city.

Hotel prices in New York City are insane. And part of it seems to be this sort of opposition to hotel expansion both from the owners of existing hotels and from unions. Also, you can't do Airbnb, but whatever. I I care less about that. When you think about like the vitality of New York City, like do you have any vision like how to break this impass or do we just have to accept that as much as the city is going to grow that the number of the capacity for our ability to take in tourism is just going to be sort of capped by our inability to build any new hotels?

We need to build more and we're at the uh prepandemic levels. Our hotel industry is doing well. I think you know the mere fact we have 65 million tourists that came in last year. Uh this is still the hot spot. People still

How's New York City? How's this summer shaping up

this summer from tourism perspective?

Not as not the levels we have. I think some of the conversation around tariffs, some of the conversations um impacted our uh tourism, particularly some of our domestic tourists. We used to get a lot of tourists from uh Canada and we never really recovered the way we should have our our Asian market. Chinese were they were a major part of our tourism, but we're going to we're going to bounce back. We had a we had a hit during COVID and we were able to recover after CO and this is still a good product. You know, people want to come here. I love it here.

Yes. And we we believe the tourist the hotel industry is going to continue to grow. You know, some bumps in the roads. We're looking at a conversation around what we could do with our hotel tax.

Yeah. How do we get more rooms though?

That's the goal. We got to build more. We have to encourage more uh building. There were certain laws that were put in place previously about getting and receiving uh the permits to build. We have to do a real analysis of how do we encourage to get more rooms uh in the city.

I have one more question.

Yes,

this is my most important one possibly and something I've always wondered um a great mystery of our times. But in the course of prepping for this interview, Joe and I watched a lot of your previous interviews, your previous videos. I was watching your famous contraband video.

Mhm.

Where in the world did you get a used crackpipe to use as a prop in that video?

That that was and actually I'm going remake that video to modern times. Uh when I did that first video, for those who who are not aware, it was a video showing how you should look in your child's room for drugs. When I did the first video and still today, uh people say, "Oh, you know, how can you do that? That's hard on children." You know many people don't know that if someone is selling drugs in your home when the police come they they come in and do a raid everyone goes grandmother grandfather children go to ACS families are disrupted and we need to take control of our homes now it may not be in your home you know in your home this is something that you don't have to even worry about or possibly I don't have to worry about it with Jordan my child but when you go to many of the inner cities with violent is rampant and drugs are pervasive. Uh when we did that video, the number of responses people gave me was like, no, wow, I didn't know that. And so that that broke crack pike back then when I did it, it was just about everywhere. Like you see in certain communities, you see uh needles that

Did you just pick one up off the street or something?

Off the street.

Oh my gosh. Okay, last question. A bunch of people threw gave Andrew Como tons of money and it came up totally short in the primary. You're still running. Yes.

A, would you consider in September dropping out if you're fourth in the polls or third in the polls? And B, why should anyone donate to your campaign or your uh super PAC given how ineffective those dollars seem to be in the Democratic primary?

Well, it wasn't in ineffective. Uh we in the last filing we were raised 1.5 million.

No, the money given to Cuomo was totally ineffective because he got trounced. So why should anyone feel that any political giving is going to be useful in this environment?

And money is important. It's unfortunate. I am probably the only elected official that has stated over and over again, we need to take money out of politics completely. We should give a dollar amount to every candidate. They can only spend that dollar amount and that's it. There's no reason we should be calling up individuals asking for money. But that's the nature of the beast. And so when you look at it, those month those dollars are are used for important reasons because television is extremely expensive. Your your staff is cost money, etc. The he didn't lose because of of the shortage of dollars. He used he lost because he did not want to be mayor. Mayor New York City is not a consolation prize. You know, you step down as governor and then you wake up one day and you say, "Okay, I want to do a consolation prize and run to be the mayor of the city of New York." And it was obvious. You don't come out on weekends. You don't do this. Don't sit down to speak on podcasts or interviews. You live in a bubble. He always lived in a bubble. Governor's son went on to become AG, went on to become governor.

And then there's another pattern that a lot of people are ignoring. Uh what he feels about black men who are elected. Nobody wants to talk about this. He did it to K McCall. When Carl McCoy ran to be the first black governor, Andrew Cuomo got in the race, uh, sabotaged his campaign. He did it to Charlie King. Charlie King was running to be attorney general, raised $5 million, was one of the leading candidates. He got in, pushed Charlie King out. He did it to David Patterson. David was going to run for reelection. He decided to sabotage his campaign and moved him out. Now he's trying to do the same thing for me. And like you said, your audience needs to really understand what happened. I ran for independent. Everyone knew I was running for independent. Everybody thought I was foolish for doing so, not understanding that the only mayors that have won on the independent line was city mayors. We knew that Mandani was going to be on the general election ballot on the Rookens family line. Why did Andrew throw his name into it if he was in the primary? He did it because he was thought he could follow the same process that he's done for a long time.

So, let's look at the polls. The polls had him up for 40 points. 40 points. He sent out a poll through his uh staffers the day before the election that he was up 10 points. He lost by 13 points.

Yeah.

How could we trust when you have an un uh expected voting environment right now? This voting this vote is going to depend on new voters and everyone is talking about the energy on the Madani camp. 9% of the voters.

2.5 million Democrats haven't voted yet. A million independents haven't voted yet. Several hundred thousand republics have been voted.

Never in my history of politics have I seen the energy around the stop Madani movement coming from my bodega owners, coming from my small property owners, coming from my Jewish community, coming from my former former Soviet and and socialist black constituents that are here right now say they don't want to go backwards. So I said it before, if you look at some of the old tapes, I said this is going to be the most exciting mayoral race in the history of this city. I knew it in um 7 covering politics.

That's right. Where were you actually the night of the Democratic primary and what was your reaction when Mum Donnie won? Were you like, "Oh, I expected this because of all the reasons you just laid out about, if I'm trying to think about it, I think I was in the bed sleeping. I knew what the outcome was going to be. I said 6 months before the primary that Madani was going to win."

And um all I had to do was wake up uh to I had an early day. Yeah, things to do in the city or I think we had a storm that day. I could have been going around the city looking at some of the rain sites. Uh, you know, you think about I always use sports as an analogy. Uh, you know, uh, I have the crown and just the thought that Andrew is going to tell the second sitting mayor, second mayor of color that I should step aside for him. I mean, that's the highest level of arrogance, you know, during my difficult moments. COVID, migrants, asylum seeker, law affair. I didn't step down. I stepped up. I I said I was elected to serve this city. No matter what I had to face, I was going to live up to my commitment. He didn't do that. When it got hot, he left. He abandoned his obligation for the city of New York. I would never do that to the city. I didn't abandon it as a police officer. I'm not going to abandon it as the mayor.

You and our producer, Kell, were the only two who knew 6 months earlier that uh I'm done. He was going to win. Eric Adams, thank you so much for uh coming on OddLots. Really appreciate the chance to chat.

Thank you very much.

Thanks.

Can Joe call you if he sees a rat?

Yeah,

I will. No, thank you so much. That was a lot of fun. Thank you. Thank you so much.

Enjoyed it.

Tracy, I'm glad we finally got a chance to speak to the mayor. I've never talked to uh never talked to him before.

Uh no, neither have I. I am enjoying this transition. I do think it's a really interesting New York is obviously a really interesting petri dish in which to experiment with a lot of economic policies and it sort of solidifies a lot of the trends we've been talking about over the years including affordable housing, taxation, things like that. I liked your question about when is there some magic line from which progressive taxation becomes socialism, right? And I actually think like this is a question for a lot of people including Manny etc. like is there like what actually like constitutes like an acceptable or an ideal level of redistribution because obviously you know uh Mayor Adams was talking about you know socialism has has failed everywhere as as as he asserted and yet an important element of New York City is the money that is uh raised from wealthy New Yorkers to as he put it you know put a put money back into people's pockets to make the city more affordable

right so at the moment that's optional billionaires can choose to do it. But I mean, if you think it's a good thing, then why not make it, you know, potentially maybe mandatory at some higher level maybe,

right? And why does it have to just be billionaires? Because also there are a lot of people who are not billionaires who are also very wealthy and that everyone just talks about billionaires, which I think is an important element of this uh conversation. You know, I do think that like there is this certain degree to which some of the pathologies of the city are just taken as like it's New York City and because it's deal and this is like what you do. So it's like and this is like these are the costs. So of course it's going to take years to figure out whether we're going to use a specific plot of land that is contested and turn it into housing. Of course, it's going to there's going to be a certain level of public drug consumption and rats, although the rats have declined and broken bathrooms and stuff like that. It does feel like in the discourse, we just sort of accept that because it's New York City that there are certain things that are just going to be like subpar or actively hostile.

again like from a family perspective like it really is not good at all that it's so hard frequently to find a bathroom in a public area. I will just say here, I mean, other major cities in the world do it differently, right? Like you go to a place like Tokyo, you do not see people nodding off in the street. And it kind of blows my mind also that New York still has this extremely high tax rate and a lot of these quality of life issues. But anyway,

there's plenty more to talk about if he wins re-election.

We'll have him back on.

We'll definitely we'll definitely have him back on to uh talk about how all of these things are going.

All right. Shall we leave it there?

Let's leave it there. This has been another episode of the Odd Thoughts podcast. I'm Tracy Aloway. You can follow me at Tracy Alaway.

And I'm Jill Weisenthal. You can follow me at the stalwart. Follow Mayor Eric Adams. He's at NYC Mayor. Follow our producers Kerman Rodriguez at Carmen Arman Dash Bennett at Dashbot and Kellbrooks at Kellbrooks. More OddLots content, go to bloomberg.com/odlots. We have the daily newsletter and all of our episodes. And you can chat about all of these topics 247 in our Discord, discord.gg/odlotss.

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