If Books Could Kill - UNLOCKED： Eric Adams

00:00:00.000 Michael. Peter. What do you know about Mayor Eric Adams? All I know is that this man's

00:00:06.220 greatest political feat is making me say the words, I miss Michael Bloomberg.

00:00:23.600 This episode was like inevitable, but also the result of a very deliberate series of

00:00:29.800 choices i like our peter's obsessions episodes i like this thing where it's like okay what what

00:00:35.120 is peter obsessed with and then how can we pretend that this is in some way in keeping with the show 0.99

00:00:40.140 peter's been watching clips of eric adams say dumb shit and giggling to himself for months straight 0.97

00:00:47.960 this is like half of our text message conversations is just like clips of eric adams i have many 0.99

00:00:54.260 friends who like i'll just send a clip of eric adams to them and they just like don't respond

00:00:59.100 but i keep doing it so eric adams is the 110th mayor of new york city he's one of the weirdest

00:01:09.400 guys in history and uh he is the mayor at one of the weirder times in history and this has resulted

00:01:17.000 in me being fascinated with him this is the part where you're pretending that this has something

00:01:21.320 to do with anything just say you want to watch a bunch of clips and dunk on this guy it's fine

00:01:27.660 i do now throughout this episode i am just gonna every now and then randomly send you a clip of

00:01:33.860 eric adams saying something weird because i think that the only way to truly comprehend him

00:01:39.980 is to understand how odd this guy is yeah and the only way to understand that is to just listen to

00:01:47.740 him talk a bunch so start off with this one oh good okay we're starting we're going right in

00:01:53.060 we're gonna do a clip right off the bat i love it

00:01:56.260 everyone knows that new york city is the athens of america is the istanbul of america is the key

00:02:04.920 of america is the soul of america we are the tel avi of america new york city is the islamabad

00:02:11.080 of america the zavgreb of america we are the lima of america new york city is mess mexico city of

00:02:20.220 america this is the doubling of america oh oh man i mean god bless him it's so perfect the only one

00:02:29.720 that doesn't make sense is new york is the soul of america which might be a reference to korea or

00:02:35.020 he might just be like making a metaphor yeah i wanted to clarify that one uh because that almost

00:02:39.600 made sense but no he's referring to seoul south korea yeah because you can tell that he's in these

00:02:44.660 countries like when he says we're the zagreb of america he has a croatian flag these are various

00:02:50.460 ethnic celebrations that occur in new york city okay and eric adams more than any other mayor

00:02:56.720 likes to show face at them uh this is these are not events that your average mayor shows up to

00:03:02.860 but it'll be like croatian pride day right and eric adams will show up and then he says that

00:03:08.320 about whatever day it is also it's funny to see them all in a row because all he's actually saying

00:03:14.040 It's like, we're a big city.

00:03:15.560 We're a big city.

00:03:16.160 Like we're the Istanbul in America just means like, yeah, well, that's the biggest city

00:03:19.240 in Turkey.

00:03:19.900 New York is the biggest city in America.

00:03:21.500 Yeah.

00:03:21.840 Although a lot of those cities are the capitals.

00:03:24.700 And so it sort of loses some of its explanatory power.

00:03:28.220 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:03:29.640 So it's also Eric Adams in that it's like half incorrect.

00:03:32.840 So just to sort of scope this episode out, all I want to do is provide like a really

00:03:38.960 high level of his life and career.

00:03:41.340 because for a lot of New Yorkers, he came out of left field a bit.

00:03:44.900 All of a sudden, he was the front runner for mayor, and then he was our mayor. 0.99

00:03:48.400 And then he's just, you know, publicly saying shit like that. 0.99

00:03:51.500 And you're like, what's going on? 0.99

00:03:52.560 What happened? 0.99

00:03:53.280 He's the South Sudan of New York politics. 0.96

00:03:57.380 He's brand new. 0.85

00:03:58.680 Really, really new.

00:03:59.800 And suddenly they have a competitive Olympic basketball team?

00:04:02.740 What's happening?

00:04:03.980 So there has been some great reporting on Adams, and I'll be pulling on a lot of it.

00:04:09.000 So shout outs up top to some journalists who have profiled him.

00:04:13.380 Ian Parker for The New Yorker, Emma Fitzsimmons for The Times, Michael Powell at The Atlantic.

00:04:18.640 Oh, no.

00:04:19.340 Shoulders of Giants and regular sized people as well, I guess, in the case of Michael Powell.

00:04:23.800 So let's start off with Eric Adams' early life.

00:04:28.300 One thing to note about his early life is that it is told to us primarily through the lens of an unreliable narrator, Eric Adams.

00:04:38.500 Once he said at a Dominican Day celebration, I may have been born in Alabama, but I'm Dominican, baby.

00:04:46.160 Which is a weird thing to say.

00:04:47.860 Okay.

00:04:48.360 Especially because he was born in Brooklyn.

00:04:53.620 That's another fun thing about Eric Adams is just the weird lying about things that don't matter that much.

00:04:59.440 A large part of this episode is colored by the fact that Eric Adams is constantly lying.

00:05:04.880 Yeah.

00:05:05.180 He loves to just tell a story.

00:05:06.940 he has said this in interviews that like what he does is tell stories to people and that's how people

00:05:12.220 that's how you relate to people what he doesn't quite admit is that that means that he lies all

00:05:17.380 the time yeah they're supposed to be true the relating part comes from them being true it's 0.65

00:05:22.200 funny that the gay community has not claimed him as one of our own as a community of compulsive

00:05:26.320 liars you said it actually i have no idea what this stereotype is of gay of gay it's not even

00:05:30.720 a stereotype it's just true it just isn't something that straight people know about but 1.00

00:05:33.520 it's absolutely accurate. So Adams' childhood is hard to piece together because of these little 0.97

00:05:39.520 lies. He once said that when he was six or seven, his dad would take him to see a man who he later

00:05:44.600 realized was Malcolm X speaking in Harlem. But Malcolm X died when he was four. Okay. So it's

00:05:50.560 unclear if that's true or not. In 1973, a 10-year-old boy named Clifford Glover was shot

00:05:57.200 and killed by police in Queens. It was a very big deal. Adams said he was marching and leading the

00:06:02.420 protests against the killing. But in 1973, Adams was 12 years old.

00:06:07.460 Leading the protests.

00:06:08.400 So there's no evidence that he was at any protests, let alone that he was leading them.

00:06:13.160 Wait, so he is the Atlantis of mayors because he's a made up place.

00:06:17.660 He published a book in 2009 where he told the following story, which I'm going to send you.

00:06:24.360 When I was a child, a friend of mine brought a gun to school to show off to the rest of the

00:06:28.860 students. This was my first time seeing a real gun. After years of playing cowboys and Indians

00:06:34.460 with toy guns, I did not believe the gun he was showing us was real. I laughed at his stupid trick 1.00

00:06:39.540 and grabbed the gun from him. If this gun is real, I said, then it should go off. I pointed what I 1.00

00:06:45.100 thought was a toy gun at my group of friends and pulled the trigger. A round discharged, and only

00:06:51.060 by the grace of God and my poor aim did the bullet miss my friends. The incident scared me so much

00:06:56.280 that I dropped the gun and ran. Yeah, this would have been like a day's long news story if this

00:07:00.900 had happened. So in January of this year, byline, publication byline, ran a piece that went through

00:07:08.080 this book and pointed out this little anecdote. And then Adams was asked about it. He said, quote,

00:07:14.160 I never fired a gun in school. And that, quote, the co-author of the book may have misunderstood.

00:07:20.540 Oh, he also said the book, quote, never got into print because it never went through the

00:07:25.720 proofreading aspect of it. Journalists pretty quickly found out that not only had the book

00:07:31.380 been reported on before, but it was available on Amazon and Barnes at Barnes and Noble when he said

00:07:37.700 this. And also this is exquisitely proofread. There's no typos in this. It's just false.

00:07:41.880 It's just not true. But, you know, welcome to the Eric Adams episode.

00:07:47.240 It's also such a baffling lie, too. It's one of these things where it's like you don't have to

00:07:51.080 do this. He told one interviewer that he played football for Bayside High School in Queens

00:07:56.460 and that they used to win championships all the time. He later told another reporter that he never

00:08:02.340 played high school football. He used to tell crowds that he boxed in his youth and that he

00:08:06.800 was good in the gym but would get knocked out in the ring. Then when he was campaigning in 2021,

00:08:12.020 he visited a boxing gym in Brooklyn and he was asked if he ever boxed before and he said no.

00:08:17.440 So he's just like a one-man Rashomon. It's just his own perspective. Who can say what's real?

00:08:22.640 One thing that we do know to be true is that when Adams was a teenager, he was involved in what is kind of a street gang, the Seven Crowns.

00:08:32.260 It seems like they weren't notably violent. They were just sort of a crew.

00:08:36.180 He has claimed that when he was a young teen, he was, quote, one of the top illegal numbers runners in the city.

00:08:42.080 Numbers runners are the people who carry the cash and betting slips between illegal gambling outlets.

00:08:47.560 I'll trust you.

00:08:48.220 It's not crazy that a young kid in a gang would be doing this in the 70s.

00:08:53.280 But he has also said that he was completely broke at this time in his life.

00:08:57.360 It's just not clear what's true here and what's not. 0.85

00:09:00.940 So it is like interacting with a homosexual and that any story they tell, you need documentary proof before you really accept it. 0.96

00:09:06.340 I'm just leaning into creating this stereotype. 0.95

00:09:08.080 I wish that I could riff on this, but I have never heard this stereotype before in my life.

00:09:13.140 This is just based on like the last three guys you went on dates with.

00:09:16.720 Literally, yes. 1.00

00:09:17.300 You're like gays, the most lying piece of shit people on earth. 1.00

00:09:20.640 Gays will tell you they work in the financial sector when they actually manage a payday lender. 1.00

00:09:25.720 A different person on this podcast gets to be homophobic for once.

00:09:28.780 So his youth does result in what is basically his political origin story.

00:09:34.640 The story that he has long told is that when he was 15, he and his brother broke into the

00:09:39.500 home of a prostitute to steal money that she owed them for running errands, and they were

00:09:44.960 arrested.

00:09:46.200 A few years ago, during his mayoral run, he changed the story and said it was the home

00:09:50.840 of a go-go dancer who had broken her leg and they were helping her out.

00:09:54.760 That feels like an obvious lie meant to make the story more palatable.

00:09:59.340 Yeah.

00:09:59.760 And it's also the sort of lie that Adams consistently tells, right?

00:10:02.560 these like little fables meant to appeal to whoever his immediate audience happens to be.

00:10:09.040 And very Trumpian in that it seems like he's trying to kind of win the interaction on like

00:10:13.480 a minute to minute level, but it doesn't need to be like internally coherent.

00:10:17.980 I do think that that's a good comparison.

00:10:19.300 And I constantly, while like outlining this episode, wanted to make Trump comparisons. 1.00

00:10:24.580 But also I feel like just because someone's like a lying, dumb asshole doesn't mean that 0.99

00:10:31.400 they're just like donald trump or it shouldn't mean that but maybe it does i don't know maybe 1.00

00:10:36.620 that these are maybe this is all one type of guy i will say the fact that he's a funny dumb asshole 0.99

00:10:41.240 is what does it that's true that's true trump lying about not knowing about ruth bader ginsburg 0.99

00:10:46.260 dying is so fucking funny yeah adam seems to lie in exactly the same way where it's like anyone

00:10:51.760 with an ounce of intelligence is like okay you're obviously lying here and not aware of it maybe the 1.00

00:10:56.160 similarity is not merely that they are dumb lying assholes but that they are also goofballs in this 1.00

00:11:00.800 way. So what happens next in this little story is that Adams and his brother are severely beaten by 1.00

00:11:06.300 two white cops in the precinct and then a black cop intervenes. This, according to Adams, triggers

00:11:13.780 his lifelong interest in both policing and police reform. The narrative he tells about this story

00:11:20.700 is kind of hazy. It changes depending on the audience. Sometimes he says that the black cop

00:11:25.740 intervening made him realize he wanted to join the force and reform it from within. Like, here's 0.54

00:11:30.720 a black man who has influence over these white men. And I've never really seen that before.

00:11:35.860 Sometimes he says that even when he was like the victim of the cops violence, he was sort of like

00:11:40.640 in awe of it. Right. He craved the power that they had. He's like, you can beat up teenagers

00:11:45.140 and not get in trouble. I also want to be a cop. Right. I mean, you know, this is a kid who's in

00:11:49.380 a gang and then he encounters a very powerful gang in the NYPD. Right. That's sort of one of

00:11:54.780 tales he tells. Maybe one or both or neither of these are the correct narrative. But again,

00:12:01.120 welcome to the Eric Adams episode. Let's move into his professional career. He becomes a transit cop

00:12:07.640 in 1984, basically just like working a beat on public transit. This is when the transit cops

00:12:14.080 were separate from NYPD. This is also before smartphones, so they couldn't just sit there

00:12:18.140 and play Candy Crush the whole time. No, they had to actually walk around harassing people.

00:12:22.020 It was very exhausting. He was fairly outspoken, especially for a cop, about racism in policing

00:12:29.960 throughout his career. And he was also sort of bumping up against like black radicals who were

00:12:35.360 sort of problematic in their own way. In 1993, he caught some flack when he criticized Germán

00:12:42.200 Badillo, a Hispanic Democratic congressman who was running as a Republican alongside Giuliani

00:12:48.860 for mayor for being married to a white woman, basically being like, if you care so much

00:12:54.000 about Hispanic people, why are you married to a white woman?

00:12:57.080 That white woman was also Jewish, which is a problem because Adams had some ties to Farrakhan,

00:13:04.060 who was making waves at the time and pretty openly anti-Semitic, right?

00:13:08.780 In 1994, he tries to challenge Major Owens for Congress.

00:13:13.440 The main reason he disliked Owens was that Owens had criticized some of Farrakhan's anti-Semitic remarks.

00:13:20.020 And, you know, Adams liked Farrakhan.

00:13:21.960 They were allies.

00:13:22.780 Adams' candidacy never gets off the ground because he was unable to collect the required number of signatures.

00:13:29.680 But there's a bit of a twist.

00:13:32.020 Adams alleges to the press that he did have the signatures, but someone affiliated with Owens had stolen them from the campaign office.

00:13:39.880 OK. 0.98

00:13:40.040 The Owens camp says that that's bullshit. 0.96

00:13:41.980 An investigation turns up nothing and so ends Eric Adams' first run at public office. 0.99

00:13:48.300 This is the problem with all New York politics is that it's totally plausible that massive corruption going on and it's totally plausible that the people alleging corruption are fucking lying. 0.98

00:13:57.880 Exactly. 0.98

00:13:58.600 Exactly.

00:13:59.080 It's impossible from far away to determine what's going on.

00:14:01.960 So in 1995, Adams starts a group of black police officers called 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care.

00:14:10.000 easily the worst name for any organization i've ever heard in my life yeah bill wooker no so the

00:14:17.080 group gets into some trouble for escorting mike tyson from prison when he was released after

00:14:22.380 serving his sentence for rape so if you recall at the time tyson himself become a muslim in prison

00:14:27.960 and was sort of buddy buddy with some nation of islam types in this era when amadou diallo is

00:14:34.500 shot by nypd in 1999 it's this big nationwide story it's like the biggest excessive force story

00:14:40.960 since rodney king that's really awful adams wants to use the opportunity to highlight the nypd street

00:14:46.840 crimes unit's use of stop and frisk this is like well before stop and frisk was like constantly in

00:14:53.480 the headlines right he appears at a city council meeting alongside yvette walton who is part of

00:14:59.520 the street crimes unit, but is disguised because she's not allowed to speak publicly about police

00:15:05.060 policy. Within an hour of the meeting, she's identified and quickly fired. There are lawsuits

00:15:12.520 and investigations following this, which reveal that NYPD is surveilling the group as well as

00:15:19.700 Adams himself. He's represented by NYCLU, the New York chapter of the ACLU. He builds ties with

00:15:25.860 people in those circles, which is important because those ties will become relevant for

00:15:31.600 his mayoral run. So at this point, he has a public reputation as a reformer and police view him as a

00:15:41.600 troublemaker, right? They're actively monitoring him. Wait, Peter, question. Do you have a sense

00:15:47.120 of like why he did that original political run? Like why did he want to get into politics? Like

00:15:52.140 what was driving that so there are verified stories that basically say that eric adams has

00:15:58.800 always wanted to get into politics and that this was always part of his arc in his own mind okay

00:16:04.400 even in the 80s he was talking about becoming the mayor at least a couple people have said like yeah

00:16:08.680 eric adams was always a guy who wanted public attention and was interested in politics okay

00:16:16.500 even if even at times when he wasn't pursuing public office he was someone who was you know 0.99

00:16:21.660 angling for the cameras at the very least and like looking to sort of looking to do shit, 0.97

00:16:26.620 you know, looking to make a name for himself. 0.99

00:16:28.820 Right. So he's partly genuinely wanting to make change and he's partly like attention

00:16:32.780 seeking and narcissistic, basically like every other politician.

00:16:35.700 Also like every other politician, the genuine desire for change part fades away over time.

00:16:41.080 Right.

00:16:41.720 In 2005, he spoke publicly about the timing of a terrorist threat level change,

00:16:47.200 which he claimed was orchestrated by nypd to help bloomberg avoid a debate nice he's brought up on

00:16:54.980 disciplinary charges for this and found to have spoken on behalf of the nypd without authorization

00:17:00.680 he retires the next week okay he claims he put in to retire before being served with charges

00:17:06.160 that's probably not true but that is where his career with the police ends and it should be

00:17:13.860 clear that like, even though he's viewed as an NYPD ally now, that was not his reputation,

00:17:19.860 right? He was a reformer. He was sort of a firebrand. He made a lot of enemies within

00:17:25.280 the department during his tenure and a lot of allies among civil libertarians. And that's

00:17:31.040 sort of where he is in the mid aughts. And then we enter phase two of his career, loosely entitled

00:17:37.740 politics, I guess.

00:17:39.160 Okay. How old is he at this point?

00:17:40.780 He is in his mid 40s at this point.

00:17:42.600 OK, so he has like a whole life and career as an NYPD person.

00:17:46.100 Like this is a longstanding career.

00:17:47.480 That's right.

00:17:48.000 That's right.

00:17:48.600 He runs for state Senate in New York where he is elected and he serves two terms.

00:17:53.680 He was a registered Republican until 2002, but he runs as a Democrat.

00:17:59.300 His early political career is weird and bumbling and a little bit corrupt, which like, I guess

00:18:05.680 his I guess his late career is like that, too.

00:18:07.920 So never mind.

00:18:08.340 It's his state senate tenure that gives us one of the great pieces of Eric Adams Media, which I'm going to send you.

00:18:17.480 This is a PSA entitled Combating Gun Violence.

00:18:23.340 And what this is, is advice for parents who are looking to ensure that their children are not getting into trouble.

00:18:32.360 Interested to learn.

00:18:33.040 what i would like to show here is to empower parents on how to search a room inside their

00:18:40.980 home it's either that han zimmer score they got going here what's inside your household

00:18:45.380 and no one can state that you can't search a room in your own home you write the constitution

00:18:51.740 there are no first amendment rights inside your household what your house he means the fourth

00:18:56.780 inspection by your house and the members of your house the message is you expect your children to

00:19:03.380 do what's right but you always have to inspect what you expect and that's the key to provide

00:19:09.600 some preventive safety so if you come to a room like this you can start out i always recommend

00:19:15.680 to start out in a periodic fashion so you'll be used to going through the room to look at

00:19:19.960 the wildest room i've ever seen it's just not not a children's room a jury box of this nature

00:19:24.860 Maybe a simple jewelry box, but if you look through it closely, you don't know what your child may be hiding.

00:19:30.460 For instance, a gun could be hitting a small caliber weapon inside a jewelry box.

00:19:36.260 Look at the various colognes and perfumes and photos and pictures.

00:19:40.680 You should always, when your child brings in his popular knapsack with many different locations,

00:19:46.100 look through it to see what exactly is your child carrying in addition to a book.

00:19:51.960 Something simple as a crack pipe, a used crack pipe.

00:19:54.860 on the street that's quite possible but this is a a discussion piece where you should start

00:20:01.180 speaking with him to find out what is he doing with it and and the whole use of drugs this invokes

00:20:07.100 conversation look at picture frames behind them cameras trying to determine what's taking place

00:20:13.520 behind a picture frame you can find bullets a bullet pause it can you pause it all right

00:20:20.900 loose bullets behind a picture frame oh it's so good dude it's so good it is preposterous

00:20:29.700 something as simple as a crack pipe is a phrase that is stuck in my brain

00:20:33.900 forever popular knapsack with many locations popular knapsack with many locations dude

00:20:41.800 everything out of his mouth is like just a little bizarre i know how this room there's no other way

00:20:48.380 to put it it's like an adult's office space there's like books everywhere that's like very

00:20:53.640 antiquated yeah he's like clones he's just like naming things that he's looking at all right let's

00:21:00.300 keep watching it i'm gonna be honest i don't even remember what happens in the rest of this i just

00:21:03.160 have this like note in my outline that's like watch whole video yeah we're definitely keeping

00:21:07.840 going yes look at all the items inside the room and fill around and see what's the possibility

00:21:13.200 Something as simple as a baby doll.

00:21:16.140 It could be just a baby doll, but also it could be a place where you can secrete or hide drugs.

00:21:21.520 Run your hands over the pillows and see if you feel anything that's unusual.

00:21:25.880 Like a pillow like this with a button is a perfect invitation to hide something.

00:21:30.380 I've felt something bumpy.

00:21:32.080 I will reach in, see what it is.

00:21:34.180 This one could be hidden inside a pillow, a gun.

00:21:37.260 It's another gun.

00:21:37.800 Maybe something that you'll think that can't be hidden there, but it can't.

00:21:41.320 Just look and see what's inside your bookcases.

00:21:44.040 It could be more than just books.

00:21:45.600 Perfect place to hide cocaine or other illegal substance.

00:21:50.080 He's holding a baggie that looks like it has $10,000 worth of cocaine in it.

00:21:55.560 The First Amendment does not apply to the right of parents to go through their homes

00:22:00.180 to remove contraband or any other unsafe item.

00:22:04.120 There are no First Amendment rights in your home.

00:22:06.880 All right.

00:22:07.300 You have a duty and obligation.

00:22:09.060 i also love that he picks the worst possible argument for this he's like this is a violation

00:22:14.460 of somebody's rights but they don't have those rights yeah like he's not just being like where 0.88

00:22:19.100 can kids hide shit he's giving you like his philosophy on children not having any privacy 0.56

00:22:24.200 rights right it's so perfect the fact that a kid has like a weird like 44 magnum like an old-timey 0.99

00:22:30.840 police pistol and the only place they can think to hide it is in their fucking pillowcase that 0.97

00:22:35.660 they sleep on every night and then the kid is also hiding the bullets separately behind 0.99

00:22:40.040 separately for convenience for his revolver yeah all of that to the uh the score to interstellar

00:22:48.260 he also gives us in this era a little bit of foreshadowing by getting into some campaign

00:22:55.660 finance trouble in 2009 he was the chair of the racing and wagering committee and in that capacity

00:23:03.420 He was overseeing a bid for some government contracts related to like slot machines.

00:23:07.860 He hosted a fundraiser for his campaign where not only did he invite multiple bidders for

00:23:13.960 those contracts, he thanked one publicly for donating to his campaign, which compelled

00:23:18.920 the other one to donate as well.

00:23:20.880 And then after the bid was given to one of those parties, he showed up at the celebratory

00:23:26.080 party that the winning bidder is having.

00:23:28.620 So this triggers an investigation.

00:23:30.260 he was deposed and hits them with a bunch of like do not recalls nothing ever really comes of it

00:23:36.300 he maintains that it was a political hit job although that's it's also one of those things

00:23:40.360 where he's like it's a political hit job but then like the undisputed facts are clearly a violation

00:23:45.940 of what he really means is like yeah i did that but my but i'm a nice guy i mean to be fair this 0.52

00:23:54.140 is my understanding of like how all new york politics works it's just like a bunch of brown

00:23:58.480 envelopes going around 1800s over there how dare you just disparage our beautiful city

00:24:05.840 in 2014 he is elected brooklyn borough president this is mostly like a ceremonial position a lot 0.83

00:24:13.000 of just shaking hands taking pictures shit like that yeah there are a lot of profiles of him

00:24:18.480 that point out that like this is what he likes the most you know he's not someone who really 0.93

00:24:22.880 likes to do the work of governing he loves to he likes to show face meet people that's why he's 0.80

00:24:27.880 going to all those ethnic celebrations in the city and shit like that. 0.89

00:24:30.940 He's a retail politician, but it's almost like he views retail politics as an end in 0.98

00:24:37.760 itself.

00:24:38.220 This is why we need a royal family in America or these other ceremonial positions so that

00:24:43.480 we can shunt off these people who like just want a glad hand and like cut ribbons and 0.94

00:24:48.000 shit and like keep them as far away from actual political power as possible and let the like 0.99

00:24:52.700 weird looking introverts like do the actual policymaking. 0.98

00:24:56.520 Maybe, but that system is obviously just what the UK does, and I don't think that they're

00:25:00.860 doing that much better than us.

00:25:02.080 Well, yeah, that's true.

00:25:03.780 So before we get to his mayoral run, I want to touch on a big Eric Adams subplot.

00:25:11.800 This is what I'm calling the guru stuff.

00:25:14.680 Adams sometimes presents himself as sort of like a crunchy health and lifestyle guy.

00:25:19.800 Very famously, he's a vegan.

00:25:21.480 He started eating a plant-based diet to combat his diabetes, and he claimed that it worked to the point where he has minimal or no need for medicine. 0.98

00:25:30.920 As borough president, he promoted plant-based diets like meatless options in schools, shit like that.

00:25:36.940 In 2020, before he was mayor, he published a book about his lifestyle. 0.96

00:25:42.980 I'm going to send you something.

00:25:45.120 He's really the Zagreb of diet influencers.

00:25:47.880 Really feels more like an Istanbul to me, but sure.

00:25:49.900 He says,

00:25:50.740 It was really amazing to me when you look at all of the scientific evidence that is hidden in plain sight, says Adams.

00:25:56.640 You know the old Greek term, let food be thy medicine, let thy medicine be food.

00:26:01.040 And I decided that I wanted to use the power of food because I was really reluctant to have to use insulin.

00:26:06.140 But all the doctors I sat down with to get alternatives basically said, Eric, this is your new norm.

00:26:11.420 And one doctor, my endocrinologist, I remember sitting down with her and she said it was impossible.

00:26:15.840 And I said, well, I'm just going to try.

00:26:18.200 Well, she saw my number reverse in my A1C.

00:26:20.760 What is the indicator of your sugar level?

00:26:23.280 She said, wow, the medicine must be working.

00:26:25.940 And I remember placing all the medicine on the table unused and said, no, I didn't use

00:26:30.780 the medicine.

00:26:31.180 I went on a whole food plant-based diet.

00:26:34.380 So he's doing the thing when they bust drug dealers, how they like lay out the Ziploc

00:26:37.760 baggies with all the drugs that they find.

00:26:39.720 He did that with his insulin.

00:26:41.460 Got him.

00:26:42.200 This is what he told to Vice.

00:26:43.260 sometimes when he tells this story he says that he actually consulted with a doctor on the switch

00:26:49.240 but either way you can sort of see the like crunchy anti-western medicine lifestyle guy

00:26:54.800 vibes here right a couple of years ago adams is seen eating fish in public and this caused a bit

00:27:01.880 of a stir of course he's been holding himself out as a vegan adams makes a statement that he's an

00:27:07.260 imperfect vegan which fair enough right although he also told ian parker for the new yorker that

00:27:14.300 he never actually claimed to be vegan and then he added if i see a piece of chicken i'm going to nibble 0.99

00:27:19.880 on it how does he keep doing it oh god his guru personality goes beyond just the vegan shit 0.99

00:27:36.180 and the medicines. He was very supportive of the COVID vaccine and was like actually fairly 0.99

00:27:42.680 aggressive about vaccine mandates early in his tenure. But a few years ago, before all that,

00:27:49.060 he was dabbling in like anti-vax sentiment. He publicly stated that he didn't need the flu shot

00:27:55.040 one year because of his lifestyle. He said, quote, the jury is still out on whether vaccines cause

00:28:00.780 autism he seems to believe that certain crystals have healing properties and other powers and he

00:28:07.480 wears bracelets with different types of crystals he has said before that new york is built atop

00:28:12.780 land with a lot of mineral deposits and that the city is therefore imbued with a quote special

00:28:18.060 energy people go to new york and talk about the energy maybe they're correct it's just like an

00:28:22.120 energy here now we are entering the eric adams as mayor part of this episode in 2021 he runs for

00:28:29.640 mayor and he wins. Part of the reason he's able to win is because he really successfully presents

00:28:35.940 himself as a middle ground between reformers and police. He goes into the race with all of these

00:28:43.960 reformer civil rights advocate allies he's made throughout the years and all of these

00:28:48.340 figures in black political circles and the black church. But then he tacks right. So this is when 0.97

00:28:56.820 violent crime has been spiking. And so he adopts a law and order platform. He was previously a

00:29:04.120 vocal opponent of stop and frisk, but he comes out for it. He's a vocal opponent of the movement to

00:29:10.040 defund the police. And he sort of just presents himself as like the common sense voice of black

00:29:16.160 and brown working class communities in the city, sensitive to and concerned about police violence,

00:29:21.660 but not anti-police uh he would consistently say like if you go to these neighborhoods

00:29:26.440 where black people live they don't want you to take away police they want police because they're

00:29:31.940 worried about the violence he's the kind of guy who very consistently says if black lives matter 0.96

00:29:36.460 then we need to focus on black on black violence too right which is like the the white population

00:29:40.600 was also very ready for at that particular time right because there's the huge anti-defund the

00:29:45.200 police backlash during the primary we get little glimpses into how weird his tenure is going to be

00:29:52.320 one of the first big weird stories is that right before the primary like two weeks before politico

00:29:57.720 did some reporting that revealed that there was some evidence that adams did not spend much time

00:30:02.400 in the brooklyn apartment he listed as his residency oh yeah and there is in fact a

00:30:07.260 possibility and it seems like maybe the evidence points toward him living in the co-op he owns with

00:30:12.400 his girlfriend in new jersey or i don't know anybody who uh lives in new jersey it sounds

00:30:17.140 so you do need to be a resident of new york to be the mayor of new york so this is not

00:30:22.820 the least important thing in the world this results in adams trying to end the media cycle

00:30:28.820 by giving an extremely awkward tour of his apartment he starts this off by like crying

00:30:34.780 outside of his apartment talking about his strained relationship with his son over the years

00:30:38.760 okay weird then he gives a tour and it's hard to describe how many things about the apartment

00:30:43.900 either seem staged or just too bizarre to understand like it's hard to describe but

00:30:50.440 there's like a single piece of a sectional directly in front of a fireplace not like

00:30:54.760 spaced back i mean like right flush against it there are curtains that are like clearly just

00:31:00.680 out of the box like they have they have the folds in them someone was like we need curtains in this

00:31:04.840 room oh my god there's a bed that's just directly in front of french stores with like no way to open

00:31:10.500 them okay there's a lineup of shoes that internet sleuths quickly realized belong to his son nice

00:31:16.860 there's fish in the fridge and so people are like aren't you a vegan because this is before it's

00:31:20.960 found out that he's not yeah and it's just weird it's it's plausible that they staged this fake 0.98

00:31:27.720 ass apartment it's also plausible that he's just a weird fucking dude who would have a weird house 0.98

00:31:31.740 like the fact that there's shit in his house that doesn't make sense doesn't actually make me all 0.99

00:31:36.380 that suspicious necessarily because this is like the popular knapsack with many different locations 0.99

00:31:41.740 guy like he might he might just have a couch in front of the fucking fireplace i mean he doesn't 0.93

00:31:46.720 look like the kind of guy who would know how to decorate an apartment so you know there's that 0.99

00:31:50.460 but the the real indicator is like you don't own a place with your girlfriend and then just live

00:31:56.380 somewhere else you know what i mean like that's just very unlikely yeah people didn't really care

00:32:01.260 I'm not sure that I cared. I think what was funny about it was his attempt to dispel the controversy with this like weird, almost like like vaguely humiliating apartment tour where you're like, what do you do? Like it would have been better to just to just not say anything at all.

00:32:21.300 This is like when speedrunners get caught cheating and they're like, I'm going to release a video of me playing the game, but like there's no audio and it's like desynced and they're playing with some like fake controller.

00:32:30.120 And it's like, this is just making it worse.

00:32:31.880 Like your attempts to prove that it's not true are kind of proving that it's true. 0.99

00:32:36.220 What the fuck are you talking about? 1.00

00:32:38.460 Oh, what the fuck? 1.00

00:32:39.820 You don't watch those on YouTube? 1.00

00:32:41.520 I know I don't watch speedrunners on YouTube, dude.

00:32:44.380 Speedrunning cheating investigations, Peter.

00:32:46.860 Oh my God.

00:32:47.920 All I'm saying is that this is a familiar pattern to me.

00:32:49.780 I now understand it.

00:32:50.660 give it to me in speed running i the ways in which our nerdiness both overlaps and then doesn't at

00:32:57.700 all when you say speed running i am like picturing a 17 year old who's been homeschooled and and one

00:33:05.540 day was like i'm gonna get fast at mario you have been watching the videos that's that's accurate

00:33:09.840 but then why are you watching all right you know what no i can't because they're really fast peter 0.65

00:33:16.900 and no one who watches sports can give me shit about watching people play video games very

00:33:22.280 quickly it's a physical feat though there's like something's happening in real life fingers are 0.93

00:33:26.260 physical people press fingers fast that's physical that's a physical feat i can't do this 0.96

00:33:31.860 there's no argument that speed running is dumb and sports are fine it's all dumb there are so 0.75

00:33:40.480 many arguments okay there are so many arguments let's spend the rest of the episode on this look 0.99

00:33:45.840 I have said publicly, sports for straight men are bravo for gays, right?

00:33:51.040 It's the same.

00:33:51.720 That's the same basic concept.

00:33:53.200 It's all entertainment.

00:33:54.440 Well, this is entertainment.

00:33:55.720 Fingers. 0.98

00:33:56.360 I would never say sports for straight men are like speed running for gay nerds or whatever 0.97

00:34:01.160 is going on here. 0.99

00:34:02.280 It's not even gay. 0.53

00:34:03.300 I don't know. 0.98

00:34:03.900 I'm just describing you.

00:34:12.140 It actually sounds very, my guess is it actually sounds very straight.

00:34:15.520 And if this is like there's overlap with like Magic the Gathering and Smash Brothers and shit.

00:34:20.080 It's basically awesome.

00:34:20.960 I'll send you links.

00:34:22.080 I will accept your apology on our next bonus episode.

00:34:24.960 Yeah, when I'm really into speed running. 0.97

00:34:26.540 No fucking way. 0.99

00:34:27.560 You have my promise. 0.99

00:34:29.720 If books can kill universe, I will never get into speed running.

00:34:33.340 I'm too straight.

00:34:33.980 I'm too normal.

00:34:34.820 You have been watching the Eric Adams clips.

00:34:36.860 I like that he's rubbing off on you.

00:34:40.160 Oh, God.

00:34:41.060 All right.

00:34:41.460 Obviously, we've gotten sidetracked.

00:34:42.900 And at a weird time in the episode, because now I'm about to talk about policy.

00:34:46.360 OK, we're doing the boring stuff.

00:34:47.620 Hold on.

00:34:48.000 No, I've got this transition.

00:34:49.700 Speaking of things that are for nerds, policy.

00:34:55.820 Nailed it.

00:34:56.900 Professional podcaster.

00:34:58.520 So Eric Adams, not like a policy driven mayor.

00:35:02.120 Right.

00:35:02.460 This is this is a guy who, again, he likes the idea of being mayor more than he likes

00:35:07.680 the day to day of being mayor. 1.00

00:35:08.960 And to be fair, being the mayor of New York City would suck shit. 1.00

00:35:11.360 Yeah, it can't be good. 1.00

00:35:12.600 Fair enough.

00:35:12.900 So, again, he runs on this, like, tough on crime platform, right?

00:35:16.720 And so his big thing off the bat is combating bail reform, which we already did an episode

00:35:21.120 on, so we don't have to elaborate too much.

00:35:22.880 The other tough on crime stuff, he takes a hardline stance on Rikers Island.

00:35:27.800 Conditions at Rikers are so awful that there is a serious legal question right now of whether

00:35:31.800 the federal government is going to seize operations.

00:35:34.960 The previous administration under Bill de Blasio committed to closing Rikers by 2027.

00:35:40.520 But Adams has sort of started like walking that back, talking about a plan B.

00:35:45.800 It's not clear if he actually could stop this, even if he wanted to.

00:35:49.380 But he's also demonstrated that he just doesn't care about prison conditions.

00:35:53.560 Last year, he announced that they would stop reporting inmate deaths at Rikers.

00:35:57.140 Oh, my God.

00:35:57.760 When the city put limitations on solitary confinement, Adams vetoed it.

00:36:02.060 And then when they overrode his veto, he issued an executive order trying to nullify it anyway. 0.86

00:36:07.140 Jesus.

00:36:07.420 And despite promising during his campaign to discipline officers who engage in misconduct, right, like that was sort of part of his platform that remained reform oriented.

00:36:17.700 He was like, we're going to get black and brown people into the force, which will change the culture over time.

00:36:23.880 And we're going to be serious about discipline.

00:36:26.560 However, he cut the budget for the Civilian Complaint Review Board, which does oversight.

00:36:30.780 He vetoed a law that would have created an accounting of NYPD stops of civilians.

00:36:37.420 complaints of abuse by nypd are at a 15 year high jesus he's also proposed all sorts of like 0.81

00:36:44.000 surveillance state shit like body scanners in subways and all this stuff that seems vaguely 0.97

00:36:50.820 unconstitutional and also just like a waste of fucking money because they're not doing them at 0.99

00:36:54.460 every single station so you can just go to the stations that don't have the fucking scanners 0.98

00:36:57.860 if you're like a terrorist or whatever so like it's completely pointless in general the sort of 0.88

00:37:03.060 practical guy who is open to reform has never really showed up, right? He's just been unabashedly

00:37:09.840 pro-police, anti-reform during his tenure and completely abandoned the progressive side of

00:37:18.300 his base. I mean, it's pretty clear that he was just lying to get votes, right? And that he had

00:37:22.540 no intention of actually doing this stuff. I mean, who knows? The reality is that before his

00:37:27.580 mayoral run he was a reform guy nypd fucking hated him yeah he had enemies in nypd right he 0.92

00:37:34.060 wanted to win some of those enemies back and he also is an old guy who didn't like defund the 0.99

00:37:39.820 police shit right and so he just takes this reactionary turn and he sort of won over nypd 0.94

00:37:46.720 to some degree yeah they they seem to be aligned with him although he's never stood in their way 0.99

00:37:50.980 on fucking anything so you know yeah one of the recent eric adams initiatives that has 0.93

00:37:55.780 been the talk of the town is his effort to reduce the number of rats in this city we have texted 0.97

00:38:01.900 about those all right i'm now going to send you a series of clips uh each of which you're going

00:38:07.320 to watch for about five seconds okay and uh and then we'll be done i want to watch the one that

00:38:11.960 we watched the other day many of us live in communities where rats think they run the city

00:38:19.260 and we are serious about this everyday employees i hear it all the time i'm on the trains i'm

00:38:25.400 walk in the streets oh i love i like that you sent the clip rather than the text because no one can

00:38:30.720 capture it i love the idea is that like the rats have gotten too cocky like yeah it's not it's not

00:38:35.960 like this like public health sanitation problem that we're addressing it's like it's us versus

00:38:40.780 the rats and we're gonna win all right uh the next one all right counts down listen it's many

00:38:49.200 rivers that feed to see a rat.

00:38:52.080 That's one of them.

00:38:53.320 You know, there's no instinct.

00:38:54.980 Okay, okay, okay.

00:38:59.020 Oh, God.

00:39:00.620 Okay, and then I'm going to send you the last one.

00:39:03.280 Okay.

00:39:03.820 This one doesn't really translate well to podcast, but we're going to describe it for

00:39:08.400 listeners after.

00:39:10.040 But first, let me count us down.

00:39:11.540 Hmm?

00:39:19.200 You know, welcome to our trash revolution and no one does it better than our amazing

00:39:38.060 commissioner.

00:39:38.980 Commissioner Tish, you have really taken on this job with me.

00:39:42.240 All right. 0.85

00:39:43.860 Welcome to our trash revolution. 0.99

00:39:46.320 Our trash revolution. 0.99

00:39:46.780 I love a diegetic press conference.

00:39:48.960 I am now going to describe this clip for our listeners, in case you haven't seen it.

00:39:54.300 Eric Adams, wearing aviators, is walking down a little driveway.

00:40:00.360 In the background, Empire State of Mind is playing, beginning, though, with a voiceover from Eric Adams himself saying,

00:40:09.240 there are two types of people in this world, people who live in New York and people who want to live in New York.

00:40:13.420 Okay.

00:40:13.760 He then arrives at a podium next to which is a trash bin and a bag of trash. 0.98

00:40:19.500 He places the bag of trash into the trash bin, daps up the whitest lady I've ever seen in my life, and then says, welcome to our trash revolution. 0.98

00:40:29.720 The thing is, I feel like the dap is important. 1.00

00:40:32.260 It's this like celebratory way. 1.00

00:40:34.860 He's like, look, we just put a bag of trash in a fucking trash can. 1.00

00:40:39.620 And then he's like, hell yeah. 1.00

00:40:40.960 Like the way that volleyball teams do after they score. 0.98

00:40:43.520 It's so fucking funny. This is this is his announcement of a big anti-rat initiative trash bins. 0.97

00:40:49.300 This is the funniest New York thing to me. They're just bags of fucking garbage everywhere. 1.00

00:40:53.600 And they're talking about it as if this isn't a solved problem in every other city in the country. 1.00

00:40:58.540 No, I like I when I'm walking down the sidewalk, I like to step in a sludge comprised of every liquid that just seeped out of a trash bag. 0.99

00:41:08.560 Yeah, I want like the brown puddle underneath like the fucking pile of bags. 0.97

00:41:14.220 This is why I don't go to New York between like fucking May and like October. 0.99

00:41:17.860 It's awful. 0.99

00:41:18.800 It smells like Venice.

00:41:19.840 What's remarkable about this clip, this is a verbal sort of tick that Eric Adams has

00:41:26.080 that I picked up on after watching many hours of him.

00:41:29.660 Eric Adams loves a rhetorical flourish and he loves drama.

00:41:33.740 Yeah, yeah.

00:41:34.220 He wants to create the vibe of a big historic moment, but his downfall is that he doesn't

00:41:42.480 seem to understand that you can't just do that with any moment and have it feel big

00:41:48.020 and important and cool.

00:41:49.420 Yeah.

00:41:49.540 It's not like, hey, we're going back to bins.

00:41:52.120 Yeah.

00:41:52.640 It's like, well, this is a trash revolution. 0.76

00:41:55.760 Yeah.

00:41:55.980 Walking down a driveway to place a bag of trash into a bin.

00:41:59.440 Into a bin.

00:42:00.120 As if he needs to like show us what it looks like.

00:42:02.380 Yeah, like, oh, what is this new plan?

00:42:03.820 How does it work?

00:42:04.900 The one funny thing about this is that I kind of think that this initiative is going to fail.

00:42:10.600 Why? 0.99

00:42:11.100 Everyone's reaction was, you dipshits don't use trash bins. 1.00

00:42:16.260 Yes. 1.00

00:42:16.660 The whole internet finally got to dunk on New York for once.

00:42:19.400 It was great.

00:42:20.180 Here's the thing.

00:42:20.820 New York used to use trash cans until like the 70s, but they get filthy.

00:42:27.140 So a lot of the problems with trash, which is gross, smelly, et cetera, are still there.

00:42:33.780 They take up a ton of space.

00:42:36.380 New York City is a very dense from a population perspective, of course, but also there's no

00:42:41.020 alleys.

00:42:41.740 Right.

00:42:41.980 It's just not really conducive to any form of trash disposal.

00:42:46.500 I don't know.

00:42:47.140 There's a lot of other big, dense cities. 0.99

00:42:49.260 What they need to do is just take parking spaces from fucking cars and like put dumpsters 0.99

00:42:53.660 in them or something else. 0.99

00:42:54.760 They need to use public space more efficiently.

00:42:57.420 Yes.

00:42:57.720 There are all sorts of solutions that other cities have implemented to similar problems.

00:43:03.040 but we as new yorkers are fated to just switch back and forth between bins and bags for the next

00:43:09.960 two centuries with every single time every single switch being touted as like yeah a transformative

00:43:15.800 moment in new york history yeah anyway that's my that's my analysis my my policy wonk analysis of

00:43:22.300 the trash situation also i need to know who brought the bluetooth speaker who was like okay

00:43:27.920 And we're going to do this like a WWE entrance.

00:43:30.060 Like you need to have a theme song and like a swagger.

00:43:33.580 If you are the audio producer who did the voiceover of Eric Adams onto Empire State

00:43:41.200 of Mind, I want to hear from you.

00:43:42.900 Reach out.

00:43:44.280 So a couple more policy items.

00:43:47.280 One of the big political dramas recently is the migrant crisis.

00:43:51.660 New York City currently housing a very large number of migrants, some of which have just 1.00

00:43:56.040 been, you know, bust here by Greg Abbott and other lunatics. Initially, Adams was very open 1.00

00:44:02.420 and positive about it, but eventually started saying the crisis would, quote, destroy New York

00:44:07.200 City and started calling on like national Democrats to step in, not to mention cutting

00:44:13.220 services provided to migrants. But yeah, he's sort of taken the conservative position on another

00:44:18.640 big ticket issue here. Right. And also coming from New York, where it's like, man, all these

00:44:24.360 people moving here we can't have all these newcomers it's like new york is the place where 0.73

00:44:28.660 people fucking go from other places i think part of this is that maybe this is the first time he's 0.57

00:44:33.540 actually had like a real discreet logistical problem on his hands yeah and so he was like 0.95

00:44:40.020 freaking out about that yeah i sort of feel like as like someone who believes that being mayor

00:44:45.080 is showing up to photo ops yeah maybe this was weighing on him a bit you know right he has an

00:44:50.720 actual problem to solve yeah and you know i mean his administration's been characterized by like

00:44:55.780 budget cuts for 3k libraries trash pickups which like you know may be relevant to the rats

00:45:03.780 now we're sort of exiting the policy realm but then you get to the turkish corruption

00:45:10.220 thank you i was just gonna ask about this what what is this even so in mid 2023 the manhattan d.a

00:45:18.500 charged a bunch of adams's donors with campaign finance violations basically a straw donor

00:45:25.280 operation the city matches campaign donations at a very high rate like eight to one and these guys

00:45:31.960 made a bunch of falsified donations to adams in order to take advantage of that system oh so if

00:45:38.760 i give 100 bucks to adams the city gives 800 bucks but i can just lie and not actually give

00:45:44.040 100 bucks and then just funnel 800 bucks to Adams's campaign. Or you can give 100 bucks on

00:45:49.340 behalf of a bunch of other people. So in November 2023, Adams is visiting D.C. to talk about migrant

00:45:57.860 issues. And the feds raid the home of his chief fundraiser with similar allegations, except this

00:46:06.160 time there were allegations that foreign donations from Turkey were being illegally funneled to the

00:46:12.220 campaign so we go from a manhattan da investigation to the feds right adams has visited turkey a

00:46:20.700 couple of times when he was the borough president including times when he had funding from the

00:46:27.420 turkish government a couple days later the fed sees eric adams phone it's classic eric adams 1.00

00:46:34.760 it's corrupt it's very weird yeah it's a little bit stupid a little bit goofy and and 0.99

00:46:42.020 bizarre in ways that are sort of hard to put your finger on the idea of like a new york city mayor 0.99

00:46:47.840 having international corruption stuff with turkey yeah it's just really weird like why why does

00:46:53.340 turkey care who the mayor of new york is new york is the istanbul of america we're gonna end up

00:47:00.340 speculating a bunch but like it's possible that what's happening here is almost like low-level 0.93

00:47:05.840 corruption that this is about like who gets to build what and where in new york city and shit 0.81

00:47:10.940 like that there are there is like a construction company involved that has ties to turkey oh so it 0.96

00:47:15.560 might not be turkey's interest it might be like just some corrupt dude there i mean there's a lot

00:47:20.760 of corruption within turkey sort of made obvious by the fact that like they've got their hands in

00:47:25.240 quite a few large political corruption scandals in the united states these days yeah it sort of

00:47:30.180 makes sense that he'd be he'd be an easy mark for someone who wanted to just like run some money

00:47:35.560 into new york politics for whatever reason it's sort of like trump too whenever he gets busted 0.99

00:47:39.100 doing corrupt shit. He seems to just not understand the concept. He's like, well, 0.99

00:47:43.200 of course, people from like the Saudi government are staying at my hotels at these jacked up rates.

00:47:47.340 Like, yeah, they're willing to pay it. Why would I not do it? It just like doesn't compute as like

00:47:50.840 a scandal. Again, I just really I wanted to avoid being like he's just like Trump. But

00:47:54.260 unfortunately, he is. He kind of is. He has this weird amorality to him.

00:47:58.100 To someone like Trump, there is no fairness, right? That sort of thing is a pipe dream.

00:48:03.880 the only like you know it's like the law of the jungle and whoever wins wins and so the idea of

00:48:11.520 being like anti-corruption doesn't compute the point is that you do the corruption for you and

00:48:16.720 your allies yeah why else would you have power right it's it's pure gangster capitalism or

00:48:21.740 whatever it's not like this has always been sort of like a vein of like reactionary thought it's

00:48:26.280 that it's not the sort of like market capitalism philosophy it's like the mafioso capitalism

00:48:32.380 philosophy, right? Like we are here to grab whatever we can. And that's our right, right?

00:48:38.420 That's a point of acquiring power and money. And to their credit, they've been fairly transparent

00:48:42.620 about this during the campaigns, right? They're like, I would like more power so that I can like

00:48:47.080 give things to my cronies. And then he does that and you're like, that's corrupt. And he's like,

00:48:50.980 what do you mean? I've been very clear about the reason this is why I'm in politics.

00:48:55.320 The last thing I want to talk about in terms of his mayoral tenure is that briefly, there was

00:49:00.800 like some hype about his ascendancy and what it meant for Democrats.

00:49:05.140 Oh, are we going to read the Nate Silver tweet?

00:49:06.800 I got I got something even better for you.

00:49:08.340 He built a fairly broad working class coalition.

00:49:13.780 He's a black former cop coming out against police reform and pulling in black votes. 0.99

00:49:20.300 Right.

00:49:20.760 So a lot of pundits thought that there were lessons to be learned for the Democrats here 0.97

00:49:26.120 coming out of the Black Lives Matter era. 0.98

00:49:28.960 I'm going to send you my favorite headline. 1.00

00:49:31.340 Oh, no.

00:49:32.320 I know from the font that this is The Atlantic.

00:49:34.360 Correct.

00:49:35.040 Headline, Eric Adams is making white liberals squirm.

00:49:39.620 Sub-headline, he battled police brutality.

00:49:42.300 Now this ex-cop is fighting efforts to defund the force.

00:49:45.720 Many New Yorkers seem ready to give his middle-of-the-road ideas a try.

00:49:50.040 Yeah, I am a little tiny baby.

00:49:51.440 The wallet inspector is here to inspect my wallet.

00:49:53.680 Yeah, I think that there was a brief moment here where these people, there's a school of thought that Democrats have been like too quick to elevate progressives and radicals and academics in their ranks. And they, in the process, have lost touch with working people who don't want to defund police and shit like that, but in fact want a police presence in their community because their communities are those that are impacted the most by crime.

00:50:21.320 So for a quick second there, Eric Adams felt like proof of concept.

00:50:27.780 It's part of a narrative that Adams himself was pushing.

00:50:30.820 He was calling himself the future of the Democratic Party.

00:50:34.240 He said, quote, if the Democratic Party fails to recognize what we did here in New York, they're going to have a problem in the midterm elections and they're going to have a problem in the presidential election.

00:50:43.660 Now, the main problem with this is that like something like defund the police never took hold within the Democratic Party.

00:50:52.180 And the idea that you needed like a counterbalance within the party itself didn't quite make much sense.

00:50:58.360 Right. Was it like a popular slogan with activists?

00:51:01.140 Yeah. Did people associate it with the Democratic Party?

00:51:04.180 Yeah. But Joe Biden had already won the election when Eric Adams is running.

00:51:09.200 Right. How did he win the election? By presenting himself as a moderate alternative to Trump.

00:51:13.920 Right. And then the Democratic Party won the midterms by presenting themselves as a moderate alternative to the Republicans who had just just overturned Roe v. Wade.

00:51:23.880 Right. Biden famously said in a state of the union, fund the police.

00:51:26.720 I shouldn't have called that my favorite headline.

00:51:28.520 OK. Here's the Wall Street Journal. Just a couple of days after Adams took office.

00:51:33.760 Oh, it says Manchin Adams in 2024. New York's mayor says he's the party's future. If he succeeds,

00:51:44.240 he might just be that. So I'm going to send you I'm going to send you an excerpt from this.

00:51:49.320 It says that is the central challenge to any moderate Democrat today. The left, prosecutors,

00:51:54.740 teachers, unions, bureaucrats, house speakers hold many levers of power now and they won't budge.

00:51:59.780 Reforming New York or Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco, L.A., Seattle, and Portland

00:52:03.720 is a hard uphill climb.

00:52:05.820 But if the Adams approach makes progress, the country will notice.

00:52:09.280 Then add grateful and admiring suburbanites to his coalition.

00:52:12.660 Despite Mr. Biden's mysterious out-migration to the Sanders-Warren left, what?

00:52:17.160 We now have two prominent, nationally visible Democrats, Joe Manchin and New York City's

00:52:22.020 mayor, who argue the Democratic Party's future lies elsewhere.

00:52:25.140 If the progressive policy disintegration continues in Washington and in the streets, someone in that party will have to pick up the pieces.

00:52:32.880 How does Manchin-Adams sound?

00:52:34.560 These people are completely disconnected from reality.

00:52:37.040 They want to cast the median Democrats as, like, far left because then it allows them to pretend that, like, Joe Manchin is a reasonable compromise for Democrats, right, as opposed to just, like, the rightmost member of the Democratic caucus.

00:52:54.260 Yeah. Because he doesn't represent a huge political constituency even. I mean,

00:52:57.780 the stuff that he wanted, like cutting the child poverty tax credit is like not popular and it's

00:53:02.960 not effective. Like on the merits, nothing he wants to do. He just wants to do nothing.

00:53:07.100 This is a guy who exists in exactly one political context, which is a Democrat in a very conservative

00:53:16.180 state that's been there for so long that the people are willing to still vote for a Democrat.

00:53:20.400 Yeah. Someone who like votes for Joe Biden's judicial appointees, but then opposes all of his policies.

00:53:27.740 Yeah. What's the constituency for that? It's exactly one Senate seat.

00:53:31.840 It is in keeping. I mean, at least they understand that Adams is also just like a fucking miserable centrist who doesn't want to actually do anything, just like Joe Manchin. 0.99

00:53:39.760 We can sort of pick this analysis apart. But maybe the important thing to note is that Eric Adams is historically unpopular. As of like last year, his approval rating has fallen below 30 percent, basically the lowest on record for a New York mayor. 0.96

00:53:59.140 And it makes sense. He's a weird guy who constantly lies, who did not actually fulfill any of his promises directed at progressives in a progressive city.

00:54:12.380 Like the thesis being put forward here is that like progressives are a very tiny slice of this country such that they don't even have a sizable constituency in New York.

00:54:24.920 and eric adams proves that right what eric adams tenure actually proved is that no progressives

00:54:29.900 are a sizable constituency at least in new york because they fucking hate him yeah and they have 0.92

00:54:34.620 tanked his approval ratings to the point where he's at 20 something percent approval that's a 0.95

00:54:42.140 lower share than the republican candidate got in the election against him right it is also worth

00:54:48.340 noting that joe manchin is one of the most unpopular politicians in america that's really it 0.98

00:54:53.300 I fucking hate these people who no matter what, no matter what happens, they're like, hmm, should we get more racist? 0.98

00:54:59.900 Should we just be a little more racist? 0.99

00:55:01.340 Well, what if we gave more money to cops?

00:55:03.200 What if we, you know, what if we listened even less to progressives?

00:55:07.060 Because the fact that we now have like four people in the House of Representatives has caused them to lose their minds.

00:55:14.980 The thing is, I consider this a problem of political misinformation more than a debate about political ideology.

00:55:21.480 because the core appeal of a candidate like Eric Adams comes from the fact that people think that

00:55:27.860 he represents a break from the norm. When he says like, oh, we're going to stop all this defund the

00:55:32.500 police nonsense. We're finally going to let the police do what they want to do. That's the current

00:55:36.960 policy. Yeah. And so you have cities basically with these entrenched problems that never get

00:55:41.900 solved because nobody can tell the truth about what we're doing now and how they would change it.

00:55:49.160 Like Seattle just elected this mayor that did the same thing.

00:55:51.960 Like, oh, we're finally going to cut it out with this activist nonsense.

00:55:54.880 And then he's now been in office for two years.

00:55:57.220 And like, has homelessness gotten better because he like cut out the nonsense?

00:56:00.860 No, because all he's doing is continuing the policies we've been doing.

00:56:05.660 Right.

00:56:05.840 And so I think what bugs me about these columns is that it feels like they're more interested

00:56:10.020 in like sticking it to the left or like making activists shut up or whatever than just presenting

00:56:16.860 to people a nuanced and like adult understanding of what the issues actually are and why they

00:56:23.880 haven't been solved.

00:56:24.640 Yeah, I think that's a really good point.

00:56:26.520 And I think that's why that's what these like op-eds are meant to obscure, you know,

00:56:31.520 where basically they're like, here in Seattle, we've tried communism.

00:56:36.140 Now it's time to try like moderate practical solutions.

00:56:41.560 It's just a way of sort of like shifting the Overton window by sort of lying about where

00:56:47.760 it currently sits.

00:56:49.240 Yeah.

00:56:49.820 There is one last thing that I want to mention about Eric Adams before we wrap, and it might

00:56:55.480 be his most outrageous lie to date.

00:56:58.560 I could not squeeze this into any other part of the episode.

00:57:02.440 A couple years back, right after Adams enters office, two cops are killed in Harlem.

00:57:08.300 Adams gives a big speech about it where he claimed that he has long carried in his wallet

00:57:13.060 a picture of his former police officer friend who was murdered in 1987.

00:57:19.040 A few days later, he poses for pictures with the photograph for the New York Times.

00:57:22.660 He parades it around media and public events for several months after that.

00:57:27.180 And then the New York Times found out that the picture was fake.

00:57:31.300 Nice.

00:57:31.520 Adams had told the initial story, which was not true.

00:57:34.860 And then his aides had rushed to manufacture an old looking photograph, which they did by printing out an old picture of this guy who was killed and then staining it with coffee.

00:57:44.900 No way.

00:57:45.300 They actually did like the Schindler's List thing where they're like artificially weathering a document.

00:57:52.460 Yeah. 0.99

00:57:52.840 Holy shit. 1.00

00:57:54.100 Another example of his willingness to just leave a narrative that pleases the audience in the moment, regardless of whether it's true. 1.00

00:58:03.760 also such a fucking weird pointless lie you can just tell the story of a friend who yeah who was 0.93

00:58:09.160 murdered if that's you know you don't have to say i carry my picture i carry his picture with me in 0.99

00:58:13.520 my wallet yeah the sort of like guy who's just perpetually bullshitting americans kind of like

00:58:20.860 it you know yeah i i have to believe that there are countries where this wouldn't work i just have

00:58:28.000 I want to believe that. Yeah. But it sure works here. And yeah, I think, unfortunately, I was hoping to go into this and come out and be like, he's different from Trump, but he's similar. But I actually just think he's basically the same guy. This is like lefty Trump. What makes the left better than the right is that Eric Adams is very unpopular and will never be mayor again.

00:58:51.760 like yeah that's what distinguishes the left from the right when it comes to these types of guys is

00:58:57.440 we don't really like them whereas you put these guys on the right and they will subsume the party

00:59:04.200 under the weight of their charisma and their ability to identify popular knapsacks with

00:59:08.660 many different locations something as simple as a crack pipe

00:59:21.760 Thank you.

If Books Could Kill - September 26, 2024

UNLOCKED： Eric Adams

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