I suppose I expected something more eclectic and thrilling out of this collision between two of the most innovative sentence-level orators in New York City. And when Eric Adams said, "I'm a bald-headed, earring-wearing mayor that's saying that you don't have to have this one stereotypical look to be successful" early in his hour-long interview with Stephen A. Smith, my appetite for stupid utterances was whetted. But I was soon disappointed, and in time, disgusted. When Adams began a story "I will stop in the middle of the night when barber shops close down—I will go inside, sit down, smoke a cigar, drink a little Hennessy," I thought were were going to end in a destination more interesting than complaints about "the people who are putting out the messages of what is important to the Democratic party." That's really all this conversation was: a heavily indicted man arguing that he was ideologically abandoned, and then targeted, by a political party that he keeps threatening to quit.
Sure, it's a little funny to hear Adams complain that his biggest challenge as mayor is the fact that the media doesn't acknowledge his successes. It's a little funny to see him play the hits, like the "haters and waiters" spiel. He is sometimes sort of accidentally correct, like when he argues that the Democratic party has largely abandoned working-class concerns. And he did have one refreshingly Adamsian turn of phrase: "When a bullet carve a highway of death in your community and it hits someone it's not a Democrat or Republican." There was room for improvement in the delivery.
But as it turns out, it's not actually that entertaining to hear the following sentiment in the same voice that Smith would use to lambast a Carmelo Anthony shooting slump: "Crystallize for the viewers out there, and the listeners on iHeart Radio as well, the kind of potential damage inflicted upon New York City in light of migrants coming to the city and New York obviously being considered a sanctuary city." It is, in fact, pretty horrifying. Someone go retrieve these uncles!
Adams is in the middle of a noxious media tour; he recently spoke to Tucker Carlson and voiced similar complaints about the Democrats; he is probably trying to be appear on as many screens as possible to ingratiate himself with the TV-watching president and secure a pardon. He spoke about meeting with Donald Trump and his associated creatures a few days before his inauguration. Smith felt that hostility towards the president was counterproductive: "This is our problem, we have politicians alluding to him being a racist, comparing him to Nazis and stuff like that right, but then I'm supposed to expect you to go out and do business with this man and and and and to legislate policy within this country."
You will not be terribly surprised to learn which Mar-A-Lago denizen Adams sees as a kindred spirit. "I'm an Elon Musk guy. I love the technology, I love what he's doing, I think this cat is going to put us on on on Mars before we know it, and all the secrets that are in our universe," he said, hinting at his own gems-oriented mysticism. "But then you get a straight-up South Jamaica Queens street cat that's able to sit down, that he's willing to pick up the phone and say, let's sit down and talk, and you want to demonize that action. So we can't have it both ways."
After he had sufficiently laid out his case against the Democrats, and laid the groundwork for switching back to his old party, Adams also found a moment to express his empathy for someone who had received a key to the city in 2023 and since fallen on hard times. "Listen my heart goes out to him. You know as you go through his legal struggles, my heart goes out to him. There by the grace of god go I. We all going through something." The "him" in that sentence was Sean "Diddy" Combs.
