Mayor Eric Adams said Tuesday that he is ready to sit down with Republican President-elect Donald Trump and his rapidly developing cabinet while reiterating that he wants to work rather than war with the incoming administration.
During his weekly press conference, Hizzoner said he has communicated to the burgeoning Trump administration that City Hall would like to engage with them on several of the city’s most pressing issues.
“We communicated that once things are in order we would like to sit down and share some of our ideas and visions around the border, around affordability, around New York City needs,” Adams said. “He was receptive to that. Our goal is not to be warring, but working, with the new president for New York City. Not four years of fighting, but four years of working.”
During the briefing, the mayor also took issue with those criticizing Trump’s highly controversial cabinet appointments — including anti-vaccine advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for Secretary of Health and former Fox News personality Pete Hegseth for Secretary of Defense. He suggested those who do not like Trump’s picks should run for office themselves instead of criticizing him.
“He ran, he went across the country, he went to rallies,” Adams said. “The person who did the sweat, blood and tears, now he has to pick his team. Those who say ‘I don’t like who you picked,’ then run. No one stops anyone from running and being the president.”
The Democratic mayor’s lastest comments fit into his noticeably soft rhetoric around Trump over the past few months—compared with most other leaders in his party. His efforts to seemingly tiptoe around criticizing Trump have come under fire, as some critics speculate the mayor might be angling for the incoming president to help with his legal troubles.
Mayor Adams bristled last week at the notion that he is trying to curry favor with Trump to help his legal case, noting that after he reached out to the president-elect, so did Gov. Kathy Hochul, US Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and MSNBC host Joe Scarborough.
“None of them, not the governor, not the senator, not Morning Joe, did you say, ‘are you doing it because you want something?'” Adams said last week. “How about we’re doing it because we love New York? This is the president. And it’s time for us to stop yelling at each other and working with each other.”
Adams pleaded not guilty to a five-count federal indictment in late September and will go on trial for the charges on April 21 of next year. Prosecutors allege that he sought and accepted luxury travel perks and illegal foreign campaign contributions in exchange for political favors on behalf of the Turkish government.
Trump has publicly belittled the charges against Adams and cast him, without evidence, as the target of political persecution from President Biden’s Justice Department. The president-elect pardoned many of his political allies during his first term in office, and Adams’ legal team reportedly believed he could do the same for the embattled mayor.
Trump is set to nominate Jay Clayton — his former Securities and Exchange Commission head — to take over as the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, the office that indicted Adams. Damian Williams, the current US Attorney for SDNY, announced Monday that he would resign next month.
