NYC Mayor Eric Adams DESTROYS Zohran Mamdani | PBD Podcast | Ep. 614
Patrick Bet-David sits down with NYC Mayor Eric Adams for a raw and wide-ranging interview on Zohran Mamdani’s socialist surge, Andrew Cuomo’s political downfall, Trump’s legal battles and public perception, and the urgent issues facing New York City, from rising crime and migrant pressure to the future of the Democratic Party and whether leadership still matters in American politics.
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TIME STAMPS:
00:00 - Podcast intro
00:30 - Mamdani's rise in NYC politics.
08:43 - Eric Adams on billionaire's reactions to Mamdani's rise.
14:20 - Eric Adams explains his switch from Republican to Democrat.
20:54 - The establishment's turn on Eric Adams.
32:32 - Eric Adam's relationship with Andrew Cuomo & Zohran Mamdani.
45:24 - Why are NYPD retiring at a historic rate.
54:39 - NYC construction and permitting delays.
1:05:00 - Why should someone build a business in NYC?
1:10:26 - What happens to NYC if Mamdani wins?
1:17:36 - Mamdani's father praises suicide bombers.
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ABOUT US:
Patrick Bet-David is the founder and CEO of Valuetainment Media. He is the author of the #1 Wall Street Journal Bestseller “Your Next Five Moves” (Simon & Schuster) and a father of 2 boys and 2 girls. He currently resides in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.
I got on the elevator one day and the elder got on.
This was many years ago.
And I said, good morning, sir.
And he says, I'm swimming with the tide.
Swimming with the tide.
That's good.
You got to get behind the momentum, right?
So now talk about New York.
Did you think for a moment, you've been a New York native your entire life, captain, NYPD, you know, growing up there, you've seen the trouble.
You changed, you know, as a young man, became a leader, run for mayor, and then all of a sudden today, you're going up against a guy, the mayoral race that everybody in America is following to go on against a Zorhan Mamdani, who on many ways you look at it, this is a person that's a communist.
This is a person that's openly said how he feels about capitalism, how he said a lot about different things.
How did things get to a point that a candidate like this out of nowhere is now being seen as possibly a guy that could win?
That's a great question because it's really not out of nowhere.
Those of us who were watching what was taking place on the stage of not only New York City, but America, I told my team six months ago, this guy's going to win.
And I need to be in a general so that I can go head to head.
Six months ago, I said that with my team.
And I said to the reporters, I said, this is going to be the most fascinating race in the history of New York City.
What happened was he already had a ready-made army that we were ignoring.
And if you go back, I was talking about the radicalization of our children on our college campuses to hate America.
What we were seeing in the street, 10,000 people marching in our street, lifting up Hamas.
And I was saying, our children are being radicalized.
And so all he had to do was pop his head up.
Once he did that, the army was already assembled and said, we want to follow someone.
And he has become a symbol of the radicalization of our young people across this entire country and specifically in New York.
But why, though?
I guess the question I want to ask is why?
Because the last five years, go COVID, right?
If you want to pull up the chart, Rob, that Brandon had on how much money's moved from different states to different places, I mean, New York was known, and many will say till today, as the greatest city in the world, right?
New York's been that city, the mecca, the financial capital of the world.
Used to be London.
Now it's you guys.
And Dano White comes and does an event here for UFC two or three years ago.
In the interview, afterwards, they ask him, they say, so what was UFC like Miami?
He says, he said, we broke Madison Square Gardens record.
He said, this is what LA used to be.
It's the energy New York used to have.
I think that's the messaging that he gave, where now a lot of people are looking at saying, could Miami become the new New York City?
But then the chart that shows the biggest difference is this.
Rob, if you can pull up the numbers with the dollars, I don't know if you have it or not.
It shows how much money moved here.
Over a trillion dollars of wealth moved out of California.
California got the money to go to Texas.
New York got the money right here.
If you look at this, New York got the money to flow to Florida.
This was one of the charts.
If you go to the other one, Rob, that shows the dollar amount, you got a couple of them there.
Go to the one on the left, the one that shows like right there.
If you look at this one, the dark purple is New York in California.
Over a trillion dollars lost.
Then if you look at states that gained plus trillion, the dark green, you'll see Florida.
You'll see Texas is less than Florida.
But you look at Tennessee, Carolina, a bunch of other places gained the money.
What happened the last five years that caused the business owners and the wealth to leave your state and more importantly, your city?
Well, you're right.
When you think about what happened after COVID, after COVID, many people felt as though during COVID that they were being confined.
They wanted to raise their children in an open atmosphere.
They wanted to go somewhere was not that restricted.
And then once they explored, once they went to travel to Florida, traveled to Connecticut and other areas, they figured out that, you know what, life is a little bit more open.
Life is, you get a better bang for your dollar in some of these municipalities.
Like the cost of housing here is far different from New York.
Now, that number is changing because New Yorkers have arrived and they raised the amount.
Many people have said, listen, we don't want you guys down here anymore.
But the reality is that once people explored outside of the city and understood that there's a good life outside the city, there's a different type of personality that you have in the city.
Just as we lost that money, we gained a large number of young people, particularly tech.
A lot of new tech companies open.
We became the hotspot for graduates, the number one location for graduates.
New York City.
New York City.
It became an exciting place.
You know, our nightlife is booming.
And our economy is the strongest in history.
Broadway had the strongest 12 months in history.
And so the city is still thriving.
But when you have someone like the Democratic primary winner saying that billionaires should not exist, they don't understand the economics.
The person who drives the limousine should do well, and a person in the back seat of the limousine should do well.
That's the ecosystem that's important for New York City.
Rob, can you pull up the clip of Mamdani that he's referencing that he's being interviewed?
And the lady who had a couple of great interviews with Trump asked, do you believe billionaires should exist?
And his answer with a chuckle, he says, I don't think there should be billionaires.
And then he says, but I'm willing to work with them.
I don't know how those two go together.
I don't think there should be billionaires, but I'm willing to work with you to give up your money and lose your billionaire status, which doesn't make a lot of sense.
There's a video of it in an interview.
We've had it before.
We've shown it.
I think that's the one right there.
And it's a clear misunderstanding of the economics.
When you look at our top one percenters and how they ensure that we have teachers, firefighters, police officers, our roads paved, that's the ecosystem that exists.
And if you don't understand that ecosystem, your actions can drive out a major portion.
Oh, for sure.
I mean, you have in your city, Mary, you have 123 billionaires.
Number two is 71 or so.
You got most of the billionaires living in the city.
And here's a question that was asked.
I thought it was a very good question.
Go for it, Rob.
You are a self-described Democratic socialist.
Do you think that billionaires have a right to exist?
I don't think that we should have billionaires because, frankly, it is so much money in a moment of such inequality.
And ultimately, what we need more of is equality across our city and across our state and across our country.
And I look forward to work with everyone, including billionaires, to make a city that is fairer for all of them.
Now, when you're speaking to billionaires in your city, at this point, they know you, right?
I mean, I saw Bill Ackman posted something.
Bill Ackman is a $10 billion guy.
He's a heavyweight, carries a big stick.
He has reputation.
He's gone against some of the biggest guys.
He's gone against Carl Icon.
He's gone against a lot of people in his career.
And he's had to slay a lot of dragons and he's been up and down, right?
But he's a tough guy.
And he puts a tweet, not this one, Rob, there's another one about, you know, him, you and Andrew Cuomo.
This was it.
In summary, in light of the inability to add a new name to the ballot and low probability of success to writing campaign, the only candidates with credible chance to beat Mamdani or Cuomo and Adams.
I met yesterday with Adams and with Cuomo to discuss the upcoming election, and I spent an hour or so with each of them.
In short, my takeaway is that Adams can win the upcoming election and that governors should step aside to maximize Adams' probability of success.
I say this while having a high regard to Andrew Cuomo and his contributions to New York State, but it was abundantly clear in his body language, he's subdued energy and his proposals to beat Mamdani that he is not up for the fight.
When you speak to billionaires like this, what are they telling you?
What is their concern about Mamdani?
Well, when you look at the policies, and you have to peel apart the policies and you get a full understanding of the impact.
Let's take the Rikers Island, for example.
That is our city jail.
We have 7,400 of the most dangerous people in our city because due to bail reform, many of them did not have to go to jail.
They were able to come out on our streets.
He wants to open the jail and let them out.
They're going to go back to the communities that they preyed on.
They're going to impact low-income New Yorkers and it's going to hurt them.
His plan to have government supermarkets.
We have many, what we call bodegas.
Those are grocery stores.
We have many supermarkets.
If you put a plan in place like that, you're going to devastate your middle-income New Yorkers, your working-class New Yorkers.
I had a meeting with 250 supermarket owners who stated that this is going to devastate us.
Increase $30 or $40 minimum wage.
That is going to devastate the working class community.
We have the largest number of small businesses that are operating now under this administration.
The largest number of businesses in general.
We broke the record 11 times.
It's because we know there's a marriage between a good wage and allowing the profit margin of a business to survive.
But, okay, so when you say that, he says, you know, seize the means of production, right?
The comments he's made about Jews.
And when you look at the population, if I'm saying this correctly, I believe the biggest Jewish population in America is in New York City, right?
You guys have 960,000 Jews that live in New York City, right?
Around 12% of the population is Jews.
Used to be 2 million back in the days in the 50s.
25% used to be Jews, but now 12%, a lot of them have left the city.
So he calls them out.
You know, he's not very complimentary of them, okay?
He calls out billionaires.
You got the most billionaires.
He's saying he's going to do free buses for everybody.
That's going to cost $3 billion that the billionaires are going to pay for because they're going to raise the taxes on the billionaires.
And you've said before that mayor cannot raise taxes on billionaires.
Exactly.
That has to be done by the assembly, which is his job that he currently does right now.
Exactly.
And everything he's saying, you're hearing the stuff that he's saying.
You're saying to yourself, none of this stuff makes sense.
How is he the leading candidate?
How does he have that?
Great question.
Because 9% of voters voted.
9%, 91%, they have yet to speak.
And so the Democratic primary is really the most liberal arm, the left arm of the voting population.
So when you have 9% of New Yorkers who are speaking on behalf of 91% of New Yorkers, now the job become, people woke up and said, whoa, whoa, what do we have here?
You know, sometimes people are lackadaisical, apathetic, not really going out and voting.
Now you're seeing an energy that I've never witnessed before in politics.
How many people showed up to vote the last time you had in 2000 and I think one.
How many showed up in 2021?
Less than, it was about close to a million.
Now we win a million plus.
I think it was around 900 or something thousand.
Okay, so I'm looking at this right now.
New York City mayoral race, November 2nd of 2021, general election.
Out of 4,911,000 registered voters, 1.149 ballots were casted.
Yes.
23.4%.
Other reports found that figure to be around 23%.
Let's just say million, million, one showed up, right?
Okay.
And so far, only 9% have showed up to vote for Mamdani.
Yeah, a little over a million.
A little over, I think they got to a million five.
This was an increase in voter participation because you had a lot of energy that people came out.
And where Andrew went wrong, he did not mobilize.
He didn't run a campaign.
He took Madani for granted instead of going out and running a hard campaign.
I say it all the time.
New Yorkers have five fingers.
They love to show you the middle one the most.
If you're not willing to go out and say you want the job, he never wanted the job.
He thought this was a consolation prize.
And New Yorkers don't like that.
And so not running a hard campaign, going head to head with him, social media, and all the tubes, you put yourself in a precarious position.
Rob, can you do me a favor, Rob?
Can you pull up Chad GBT and ask the following question?
How much was voter participation in 2025 New York City mayoral race?
Can you just type up?
How much was voter Potter's participation in 2025 mayoral race?
This is a number that came up to me.
And again, I'm trying to see what's going on because it's a little bit confusing on what's going on.
So this is the number that we see.
The primary was New York City's largest ever.
Nearly 1.15 million votes casted in 2021 general election, general election.
First round, Mamdani 462, Cuomo 384.
Brad Lambert 119.
Total ballots around a million.
Early voting search with about 94,000 casts in the first three days, more than twice the 43,000 in 2021.
So this is 2X, more than 2X.
Overall turnout was under 30% of registered Democrats, consistent with the past New York primary.
So that's the numbers we're looking at right now.
So you chose to become an independent.
When I look at your history with your past, last night, I'm at a local Italian restaurant that I go to all the time, Casa D'Angelo, and I'm there, and I can't leave the place.
Everyone's asking me, I saw you're going to have the mayor on.
Let me tell you.
They were sitting in the entire family.
I want to give these guys the right shout out because they'll know that we were talking yesterday.
It was the Shortino family, right?
Anthony and Michael.
And the family's sitting there, the wife, the mother, everybody.
Let me tell you, you know, we're Republicans, but this is our, we can't have Mamdani.
We're going to be getting behind him.
He's a good guy.
He's got to do this.
Then the other table, New York, then the other, because, you know, South Florida is a lot of New York.
And you're seeing this surge.
You're seeing this number taking place with the level of interest on what's going to happen in New York City.
But Mamdani is the lead today.
And when I think about you and I think about, you know, your past, what you've done, how you came up.
And I went and looked up if you were always registered a Democrat.
You were a Republican 95, 97 to 2001.
So you were Republican for four years, and then you switched to Democrat, and then you became independent.
And when I ask around, people who know you, who like you, I don't know a lot of people that don't like you.
Almost everybody I talk to, they like you.
We have a friend Alex Spiro.
I'm sure you know.
Yes, I do.
We spoke this morning.
He said, let him know that, you know, Alex is a heavyweight.
You know who Alex is.
It doesn't get any heavier.
No, it doesn't get any heavier than Alex.
No, no, Alex is Alex is as heavy as it gets.
Yeah, he's represented everybody.
You, Trump, Musk, a lot of Jay-Z, a lot of guys.
So the question becomes, you go Republican, you go Democrat, now you're independent.
I ask, why did that happen?
They said, well, you have to understand New York politics.
You know, this is as Republican of a Democratic and independent candidate you'll have, but if he goes as a Republican, ta-da-da-da-da.
I said, you know what made Trump attractive is the following.
And I'm just going to talk openly.
I'd love to see what you're going to say.
So he came out and he said, look, this is what I am.
Boom, So everybody's like, okay, I know how to get behind him.
Because I think this is the worst time ever to be wishy-washy to try to win everybody over, right?
Especially in the city you're in.
And when I look at this, I'm like, you don't give me Democratic vibes.
Even when you were doing a sanctuary city, I'm like, dude, this guy knows this is not going to, like, you know, you even saw why are we giving away the money?
And the moment you started saying that, they came after you immediately.
We got to take this guy out, right?
So what caused you to go from being a registered Republican, not for a split second, for four years, five years, six years, to a Democrat, then an independent?
So let's think about this for a moment because you're right.
Our city, both Dems and Republicans, have different feelings on different topics.
And what you'll find throughout those entire years, I've been consistent.
Public safety.
We have to be safe because that is the prerequisite to our prosperity.
And I have been always focused on that.
My moderate Dems, even progressive Dems, my moderate Republicans, even conservative Republicans, independents, they all say, you've always been clear that our city must be safe.
My children must go to school safe.
I must be able to live on a safe neighborhood.
That is the foundation of my run.
Party lines and party labels don't define a person.
You know, I may be a blue Democrat, but I'm red, white, and blue.
I love this country.
I had a 19-year-old uncle that died in Vietnam defending his country.
He didn't agree on everything, but he said, well, my country called, I responded.
That's the energy that I come from.
So when you look at someone like Michael Bloomberg, who was one time a Democrat before he ran Republican, Independent.
Donald Trump was a Democrat at one time, you know, before he ran Republicans.
Those of us who love the country, we use the vehicle to continue to serve the country.
The vehicle doesn't define who we are.
Why were you Republican 97-201?
I was a police officer at the time, and we saw an unbelievable lax criminal justice reform.
We were doing some of the things that we're doing now, allowing people who commit crimes.
It was a repeated revolving door.
Now, as a police officer, I was seeing this all the time and telling those who were in office that these laws are not the way we should be going.
And the Republican Party started defining clearly the whole public safety agenda.
I have a straight public safety, business-friendly law enforcement agenda.
And that's why we're talking about the- Why did you leave it in 0-1?
Because 0-1 is when Giuliani and Bernard Carrick and the late Bernard Kerrick, their cleaners, right?
Yeah, he was a good friend of ours as well.
Yeah.
So why 0-1?
Was it after 9-11 when you switched back to the Democratic Party or was it before 9-11?
It was when I switched back was around the time when I said, you know what, this is a Democratic town.
It's almost similar to what Michael Bloomberg did.
It's a Democratic town.
We need to be on the Democratic Party if you're going to get elected to get something done.
If you want to get elected to get something done, you have to understand what vehicle to use to get elected to get something done.
Did somebody knock on the door and tell you to switch or was that like, hey, Mayor Adams, if you, you know, Eric, Captain Adams, if you do this, I think you can end up being a mayor.
You can have a political career.
Was it just a decision you made?
Was it an event that took place with Giuliani and Carrick?
What was it that got me?
Some of my mentors, when we sat down and I saw what was happening in the city and what direction we were traveling in the city, they said, Eric, don't only complain about it.
You need to get into elected office to do something about it.
I had a young man who was 11 years old.
He was arrested two or three times for robbery.
And I was doing midnight tours of duty and I walked into the precinct.
I saw him in there.
He was spitting at everyone, cursing at everyone.
And throughout the night, I befriended him and I asked him, What's going on?
He broke down and started crying.
His dad was in jail for homicide.
His mother was selling her body on the streets, hooked on crack cocaine.
And he was out of school for three months and no one knew about it, that he was out.
And I realized that putting handcuffs on these children is not going to solve the problem.
And when I spoke with many of my mentors, they said, listen, you did time in the street as a police officer.
You see the end of the problem.
Now I'm going to government to reverse the problem and that put me back on the path on the pathway.
Got it.
So the inspiration was to leave the Republican Party for that, but it was also, if you're going to have a political career in it, you know, join the Democratic Party.
They're going to have your back.
You'll have a career politically there.
Now, you went there, okay?
And that always had my back.
I was always the outsider.
Oh, well, that's where I want to go next because what I noticed, a pattern with New York City politics is: so, you know, Andrew, Cuomo, governor, two-term, father, three-term, brother, CNN, right?
So he's there.
He's doing his governor thing.
And I think Andrew may have even been three terms.
I think it's two terms.
There's two terms, yeah.
And at first, COVID happens.
We have to hear him every day.
And he was on TV every day.
Remember when he's doing all the updates?
He's eating his burgers or whatever.
He was doing that.
We could get in the updates.
This guy's going to be the president.
He'd be better than Trump, right?
And then all of a sudden, he started calling out a little bit of the left.
And then De Blasio was an AOC went against Amazon.
And oh, we don't want Amazon.
It's like, wait a minute, that's 25,000 jobs at $100,000 salary.
What are you guys talking about?
Let him come in.
No, they're going to increase the rent and da-da-da.
And then Bezos took the jobs elsewhere, right?
But then the moment he started kind of calling out against the establishment, instantly, the sexual charges came up, the 15,000, which the old folks owned, that was his mistake as a governor that he went through.
Major mistake.
Could have been a fatal mistake that he made on his career.
But they went after him.
The same people that were saying he should run for office and be president, then all of a sudden went after him.
You, New York, at first, you're aligned.
At first, you sound like you're trying to be a gamer with the Democratic Party.
And then all of a sudden, us who were watching it closely were like, ooh, he's not comfortable with that.
Ooh, he just called them out.
Ooh, the $550 million credit cards and all this stuff.
And ooh, he just called out Biden, not getting help.
They're going to come after him.
Boom.
Almost instantly, the turkey, hey, we want to give this event.
They're coming in.
Can we give them a better experience?
All the stuff that happened with that.
And then now your name is being mentioned in different places.
And I publicly, they're defaming you in their own way.
And, you know, you're going through a long law.
Your lawyer is telling you for a year and a half you can't say anything.
So you have to kind of stay quiet.
The pattern of trying to make it in the Democratic Party, when they have your back, they have your back.
The vibe I get is the moment you decide to be a man of your own, they're almost hanging on to a receipt to come and destroy your life.
Is that what caused you to leave the party?
No, let's go back for a moment because you peeled, you said a lot, and I want to peel some of that back.
Peel some of that back.
I was always an outsider.
I always was a person that, you know, when you look at the policies of the party for the most part, of the whole public safety, they tend to shy away from the public safety conversation.
And I never did because being on the streets, seeing the victims of crime, I was always a believer that innocent people should not be the victims of violence.
And that was not always the tone.
When I ran for mayor and I said, I'm running on the platform of public safety, my consultant said you can never win on that.
There's no way you can win on the public safety platform.
You got to run on another platform.
And I said, no, I know what I'm seeing every day.
Interesting.
And I've always stayed focused on that.
That was always my North Star.
And the reason even Madani can start talking about affordability and other things, because I made the city darn safe.
We're the safest big city in America.
And so I've always pushed back on what I felt was wrong.
I was always rooted in your belief.
Don't go away from what you believe in.
And if you Google me 20, 40 years ago, you're going to say this guy was saying the same thing.
He was always pushing public safety and justice, public safety and justice.
And so when I ran for mayor, there was many people that was concerned that I was mayor.
You know, when I got elected, I said, I'm the new face of the Democratic Party.
Those working class people that's going to fight for a working class agenda.
And even when we came down to which I think was a turning point, was the migrants and asylum seeker crisis.
That was a turning point.
It was costing us billions of dollars, totally $7.7 billion now total.
We were getting $4,000 a week, you know, $8,000 every two weeks.
The federal government did not allow me to stop the buses from coming in.
Did not allow me to allow them to work.
Some of them were waiting a year and a half to two years to work.
City law required me to feed, house, and clothes.
I educated 50,000 children.
And so when I saw this was devastating us financially, because those dollars should have gone to the services of our city, that is when I believe they decided that, you know what, we're going to come after this guy.
And, you know, when I heard the president talk about it on a campaign trail, I didn't know the president, never met him.
He both was in the same city.
Never met him until he was running for office.
You and the president have never met?
Never met until we were in this, until he was running for office, and I met him at the Alfred E. Smith dinner, a huge Catholic dinner.
2016 or 24?
This one here, 24.
Oh, so 2024, you've met him.
Number 2024.
Never met him.
Never met him.
Oh, wow.
He was on a campaign trail without knowing me, saying, look what they're doing to this mayor.
This is wrong what they're doing to this mayor.
Many people didn't read the indictment.
I was charged and indicted for calling the fire department and asking them to do a building inspection.
Not to pass it, do a building inspection because the president of Turkey was coming to see the opening of his new building.
And they stated that, you know, throughout the last 10 years when you traveled and paid for the trip, you asked for upgrades.
I got upgrades when I went on government to travel.
And when I was on personal travel, do we have more legroom?
Which acts all the time.
They took that and said that because you called the fire department and asked them to do a building inspection, that we're going to charge you with bribery.
I was facing 33 years in prison, 33 years in prison.
And it wasn't until I read Cash Fatell's book, Government Gangsters, that you see the lawfare that has been taking place in our country.
What?
Did you find out who was behind the whole thing?
Well, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District was a person named Damien Williams.
When he left after President Trump got elected, he opened a website.
The Damian Williams that worked on the Epstein file and worked on Marianne Comey like that, Damian Williams?
If it's the same, I don't know the files he was on.
Yeah, yeah, this is a Damian Williams that worked on the Jelaine Maxwell file on Sam Bankman Freed, Sean Combs, And Brian Benjamin, the attorney general, the lieutenant governor, highest ranking African American in the state of New York.
They indicted him, destroyed his career, and then dropped the charges.
But what Americans need to know is that they felt as though they were sovereign.
Their mindset was they're sovereign.
Just think about that for a moment.
Sovereign, when you're solving, you don't respond to anyone.
They didn't feel they were supposed to respond to Maine Justice.
They didn't feel they were supposed to respond to the president.
They felt as though they were an entity within America.
That's not in the Constitution.
Everyone answers to someone.
Do you think what they did to Andrew Cuomo was also unfair?
I don't know the full scope of what happened and understanding the full scope.
Were you supportive of him as a governor, what he was doing in New York?
Were you somebody that said, I like him as a governor more than I like Hokul as a governor?
No, no, no.
You prefer Hokul over Cuomo?
I prefer Hoku, yes, Hoku's actions over Cuomo.
Let me tell you why.
Cuomo passed bail reform that turned the revolving door of the criminal justice system.
As you mentioned, Cuomo killed 15,000 loved ones in the nursing home.
Cuomo also did other laws that many people may not understand the depth of them, like raise the age, canceling supplement for people who are in housing.
It created our housing crisis, closing psychiatric beds, and creating, when we see people in our street walking around with serious mental illness.
And so when you look at his programs, I had to fix those programs, his cannabis law, I had to close 1,400 cannabis shops that were creating violence in our communities.
And so there were many laws.
He succumbed to the left.
The far left that's in Albany, if he did not succumb to the far left and went based on his principles, I would not have had to fight and clean up our city.
I'm fighting with the far left in Albany, the far left in the city council.
It's a constant battle, and much of this is coming to the far left hurt us.
How's your relationship with Letitia James and seeing what she did with Trump when you were following it?
Because that's in your city, so you're seeing it on a daily basis.
What do you think about what she did with Trump's case?
Well, she's the state attorney general.
Sure, right.
And they conduct investigations, you know, that we're not privy to those investigations, but I don't think at no time should we ever use an investigatory body to go after individuals.
You know, advertising ahead of time that, you know, she was going to go after the president.
I don't think that was the right thing to do while you're campaigning, to say you're going to specifically go after someone.
So I don't know the depth of her investigation.
And you know the stories now with Letitia James.
Do you have a relationship with her or you don't have a relationship?
I've known Letitia James for years.
We came up through politics together.
Right.
And I am very, very, as my attorney, Alex Barrow, told me when I was going through my investigation, that, Eric, don't you say anything until this is over.
And now I'm free to talk about it and I talk about it.
So I'm very leery of talking about investigations that's dealing with other people because they should have the right to go by their attorney.
The only reason I'm saying that is because while you're watching what the president said about you to say how unfair it is what they're doing to you, did you at any moment watch some of your colleagues in New York that you came up with saying, dude, what are you guys doing?
This is fully unfair what you're doing to the guy, to Trump.
And we know it's not true.
Why are you guys going after him the way that you are?
Did you ever have any types of conversations either publicly or privately with your peers saying, I think you guys are crossing the line a little bit.
You're using the justice system against the president.
We don't have that relationship that she would go into the investigations that she's doing.
We don't communicate like that.
I don't give a shit.
Personally, just your opinion, though.
That conversation with you.
Yeah, your own opinion.
Like, did you publicly have a sentiment to say, I don't think it's fair what they're doing to President Trump?
In my gatherings, I've often talked about this is wrong.
This is wrong.
Lawfare is always wrong to me, no matter what.
Lawfare is wrong.
If anyone attempted to use lawfare on someone, I've always felt that wrong.
I believe in justice and public safety, and I always make that clear.
So you would say it was unfair, some of the ways New York handled President Trump and trying to do everything for him to not be able to run.
And when you do an analysis now and you read back over what he was charged with in some of those cases, you have to ask yourself, just as I asked myself when I looked at what I was charged with, how are we stopping the President of the United States from running for office and the timing of that?
And then you look at what President Biden did.
President Biden partnered his son.
President Biden said the Justice Department was politicized.
He said that.
I said it.
President Trump said it.
And I don't think we should ever politicize our Justice Department.
That's fair enough to know that.
So Andrew Cuomo.
Yes.
There's multiple stories here.
The story of, you know, one of them says you're asking him to step down.
He's asking you to step down.
So has that conversation happened with the two of you guys together and how's that conversation gone?
Think about this for a moment.
We knew prior to the election, pre-election, we knew I was going to be on the general election.
We knew that already.
Here's something else we knew.
We knew Madani was going to be on the general election.
He was going to be on the Rooking Families Party line no matter what happened.
That's another line.
Cuomo files his independent petition to get on the line knowing that.
So this scenario that's set up now with the three of us in it, that's a scenario he created.
He knew that no matter what was going to happen, Madani and I were going to face each other or he and I were going to face each other.
He created a scenario where all three of us are now facing each other.
He should do the right thing for New York.
He lost to him.
He spent $25 million.
New Yorkers heard his voice.
They didn't support it.
Now allow me to go one-on-one with him because I'm going to beat him.
I'm going to finally get my story out of the success and the turnaround of our city.
I cycled us through COVID, through migrants and asylum seekers.
I brought back the economy of what you're seeing in New York City.
New York City is thriving again.
Bond ratist increased my bond rating, seeing how I was fiscally prudent and made sure we use our dollars correctly.
How different is it running for mayor of a city like New York City versus running for governor of a state, New York?
How different?
Totally different.
Totally different.
What's the different strategy?
Okay, first of all, when you're running for governor, you're in this cocoon.
You're basically popping out at different events every once in a while.
You have the security around you.
No one is really getting close to you.
When you're running for mayor, you are in the thick of it.
And he thought he could come out every Sunday to a church event and go back home.
That's not how running for mayor is.
You're in the subways.
You're in the park.
It is the epitome of shaking hands, kissing babies.
You are entrenched and embedded in the city.
And that's what Madani was willing to do.
And Andrew was not willing to do that.
I do that every day.
No one does it better than me of interacting with everyday New Yorkers because authentically, I love this city.
I love New York.
That's not a bumper steak sticker for me.
That's not a t-shirt.
Oh, no.
Listen, you sound New York.
You talk New York.
You walk New York.
And, you know, you were on our friend's show, you know, Andrew Schultz, and, you know, when they're talking about New York flagrant, all that stuff.
So, so, okay.
So if that's the case, you're seeing what Mamdani is doing in the streets.
You're seeing how he's campaigning.
He's using social media in an incredible fashion where he's getting a ton of momentum.
When you're walking in the streets of New York, how are people treating you?
And what are you hearing about how people are treating Mamdani when he's walking the streets of New York?
Listen, you're going to have a population because it's a heated race.
So you're going to have a population that's going to say, hey, go ahead, Mandani, keep going.
You got that strong population that's saying, Mayor, you must win this.
You must win this.
Those on his side that voted for him are saying, hey, keep going, keep going.
My voters are saying, you must win.
You must win for this city.
That's the different energy.
So people are acknowledging the energy that he has brought to the campaign.
They're missing the energy of those who are saying, you need to win, Eric, to continue the success of this city.
Because you know why?
They're not loud.
They're not boisterous.
They're not in your face.
They're not yelling at you.
They're not cursing you out.
They're going about their business, doing their jobs every day, but they're registering the vote and they're going to show up at the polls.
We're going to register a million new voters to add with the existing voting population.
Yeah.
Who are some surprising names that are getting behind you?
Who are some names that you would have said, I would have never thought for those guys to get behind me that they're getting behind me in this race publicly?
Yeah, well, there's a host of, you see some of the articles that, you know, people are saying, you know, Andrews should step down, Curtis should step down, everyone should mobilize behind Eric.
I mean, you know, the public comments are clear.
You just saw Bill make a comment who's extremely influential and powerful in the city.
But then there's also those names.
They're not A-list names.
The rabbis, the ministers, the Sikh community, of the, you know, the bodegas associations, of the supermarket, independent supermarket.
So these real New Yorkers that are important.
Because you could have an A-list name, but you're going to need everyday working class people to be in the street to mobilize and have a grassroots organic campaign.
When you think about power players, power brokers, like you just said something very interesting, where the public lemmy knows what.
You know, you got Bill Ackman.
Everyone knows who he is, right?
Jamie Dimon just came out and said something this morning.
Rob, I don't know if you saw that one.
Jamie Dimon this morning said Jamie Dimon lashes out on Mark 6 Orhan Mamdani, left DEI push, big hearts with little brains, right?
Then you have Trump called him the communist lunatic, if I'm not mistaken.
I think that's the phrase he used, right?
You got all these other people that are calling him different things, fraud, because he claimed he's an African-American on his Columbia application.
And he put, I think, black and Asian, but he's not necessarily African-American to put it.
Well, you know what?
I shouldn't have done that, all this other stuff.
But who is the Robert Moses of New York today?
Because back in the days, when you read about the power broker, Robert Moses, right?
And you hear the kind of influence he had, where everything had to flow through him, right?
He was the guy that, you know, the biggest power broker New York had in a long time, how he built the roads, the bridges, the controversy behind it, all that other stuff.
When I look up and say, who's the power broker today?
I see Jerry Spire, right?
The CEO of Tishman Spire.
He's the developer behind Rockefeller Center and other Manhattan projects, Lowe's corporation of that family.
Richard Kaufman, right?
The New York original Energy Czar.
You got Justin Driscoll, who is the CEO of New York Power Authority.
Robert Feuderman, Kathy Wilde.
You're seeing some of these names, the power brokers.
Does New York still run on the model as a Robert Moses?
And if yes, who is the modern-day Robert Moses of New York City?
No, it doesn't.
And you have some good players, even Bill Rutin and the Rootin family.
It doesn't.
It doesn't have that one person.
There was a different dynamics.
And not only that, city charters, other laws have been put in place to prevent that centralization of one person that's going to have to agree or put their stamp on something.
It doesn't exist.
All of those names that you mentioned, they're extremely influential.
They are important to the flow of the city, but there's not one name you can mention to point out.
I mean, you even have someone as the former mayor, Mayor Bloomberg, is extremely civically involved.
He thinks it's very important for our city to be clean and safe.
But if you were to say who's the Robert Moses of the day, that structure has been changed a lot because of the Robert Moses.
Is that a good thing?
I think it is.
I think it is.
People should weigh in on what happens in their communities.
Responsible adults should weigh in.
Robert Moses split up the Bronx with the Cross Bronx Expressway.
They're still recovering from that.
The asthma impact of the highways that he built throughout the city really had an impact on neighborhoods.
You think about the ones that he built.
So I think it's imperative to have responsible involvement that does not slow down the evolution of the city.
So I pulled up and I said, okay, what are the top five things New Yorkers right now in New York City?
Yes.
What are the top five most important issues to them?
This is what came up.
Number one, affordability and cost of living.
93% of New York voters say affordability is a critical crisis.
72% reporting stagnant family incomes.
Okay, so that's one.
Number two, housing and rent and development.
You know, median rents now are nearly $3,700 a month.
Vacancy rates are at 1.4%.
Signaled by Mamdani proposal to freeze rent, stabilize rents.
Okay.
51% support on that.
You have number three, crime and public safety, which on multiple categories you've improved, on a couple categories you've declined.
Taxes and economic policy, nearly 48% of 48% support raising taxes on corporations and the wealthy to fund the free transit and housing, but fear of backlash tempers support.
So we want it, but shit, if we do this, the billionaires could leave and they can go to Florida, right?
Right.
And in transit and public service.
So when you see that as the five issues and affordability, cost of living, some of the challenges, how are you addressing each one of these?
So let's peel back that list.
First, the affordability issue.
I can't decrease the cost of bread, but I could put bread in your pockets.
We put $30 billion back in the pockets of New Yorkers, paying off medical debt, the number one cause of bankruptcy in the city, reducing the cost of transit and reduced fare metro cars.
We just passed an ACTS to tax initiative, no income tax for low-income New Yorkers, making sure we pick up the cost for high-speed broadband and public housing, paying the college tuition to foster care children, reducing the cost of child care from $220 a month to less than $20 a month.
So if you see what we've done, we say, what's within our span of control?
What can I do as mayor to bring down the dollars that everyday New Yorkers are spending?
I'm not giving them broken promises because the worst thing you could do, when you grew up in poverty, the worst thing could happen to you, someone promised you something that they can't deliver.
That's what's happening now, and that's unfair to do so.
The free bus initiative, like you said, costs $3 billion.
Mayors don't have the strength or the power to raise income tax on 1% of New Yorkers.
We don't have that authority.
So the problem is that knowing you don't have the authority to do so and not doing it while you are assemblymen who has the authority, it's just the wrong message.
Now, when you look at the housing, each year, three years in a row, we built and renovated more affordable units in each independent year in the history of the city, in the history of the city each year.
My housing projection is more than 12 years of Bloomberg, eight years of de Blasio combined.
Move more people out of homelessness into permanent housing in those individual years in the history of the city.
Move more people into supportive housing in the history of the city.
We have a voucher program that subsidized rents for low-income New Yorkers.
More people got those vouchers and were able to subsidize their rent in the history of the program.
So we are doing it and making sure that we're not saying broken promises, because that's the worst thing that you can do.
And we look at our subway system, you know, we have 4.6 million people that use our subway system a day.
4.6 million.
That's crazy when you think about it.
We have five felonies a day on that system.
Out of 4.6 million.
Is that an accurate number?
Is that real?
Yes.
4.6 million use it daily, but only five felonies a day.
Exactly.
Exactly.
Those police officers are working their butts off to keep that system safe.
So where we have failed as an administration is that we have not effectively got our message out.
I thought that, you know, every elected official, you would take hits from the media.
That's the business that we're in.
And I thought that.
I never thought we would take hits and also never get our story out.
When I'm in town halls, community meetings, even when I sit down and talk to my son and do our wins list, you know what he tells me?
He said, Dad, I didn't know that.
I sit down and speak to knowledgeable people in the city and they're not aware of how we turned this city around.
So now for the next three months, I'm speaking directly to the consumers and I'm getting my message out.
I want to go deeper into this here because when you're saying about crime, what's happened, homicide is down 22% since 21.
Shooting is down 40% since 21.
Felony assault is up 29.
Car theft is up 36%.
Robbery is up 20%.
Total infraction is up 28% in the crime category, the 34 crime categories.
While I look at these numbers, so you can highlight the two good, which is what?
Homicide down 22, shooting down 40, but the other four are up, right?
Story comes out of NYPD.
Rob, I don't know if you saw this, but we talked about this, I think, last week.
It could have been.
The number of police officers resigning in New York has skyrocketed.
New York cops would flee the job in historic numbers of Zoro and Mamdani when union leaders predict.
Not even this one, Rob.
There's one that says how many are retiring.
If you use the phrase retiring instead of resigning, retirement.
Yeah, NYPD retiring.
Maybe it's the same story.
Go on the same story, see what numbers they put up, but I'll read this to you.
Exactly.
That's the one.
That's the one.
Because of 1554, 941.
If we can get that out of the way, there you go.
So police officers are retiring in historic numbers, and the exodus will only accelerate if anti-cop Democratic mayoral nominee Zorhan Mamdani is elected.
And union officials warned this week.
As of Monday, 1555 New York PD, NYPD police officers, put in their papers 48% more than last year, 1,049, okay, who retired last year.
That's a big number.
Yes.
And 65% more than a decade ago.
Okay.
When just 941 turned in their shields, according to NYPD data provided by the Post and Police Benevolent Association.
This is happening under your watch that they're doing that.
And you're a guy that's a former captain.
Now, some may say this is because of Mamdani.
Some may say many other reasons.
But I want to hear from you.
Why are so many cops choosing to retire and go elsewhere?
Well, a couple of things.
First of all, I want to go back over those numbers that you had.
What time period was that you were?
2021 to 2025.
So the numbers I give you, homicide down 22%, shooting down 40%, felonies up, assault up 29, car theft up 36, robbery up 20, infractions up 28%.
That's from 21 to 25%.
Right.
And that's not how you judge success in law enforcement.
That's when I heard those numbers.
I said, something is wrong with me.
What you do, you compare year over year.
That is how you compare the uniform crime report FDI report.
You look at what happened one year and another year.
And the reason you do that, because it's closer to the changes in those years.
Back in 2021, you didn't have a full scope of bail reform.
You didn't have raise the age where you were charging 16-year-olds no longer as adults when they do real criminal behavior.
So there was a lot of things that happened back then that they didn't have to deal with that we have to deal with now.
When you compare year over year, which is normally how you do crimes, how are we in 24 compared to 25?
The first six months of this year, those numbers are drastically down.
We're moving in the right direction, even with a very soft criminal justice system where you know how hard it is to go to Rikers Allen jail?
You have to commit some serious crime.
I have a city council that is fighting to let anyone out with the crime to come through.
And I have a state lawmaker.
So when you compare year over year, you're seeing a real movement in the right direction.
Not only did we have the lowest number of shooters and homicides in the history of the city, we took 22,000 illegal guns off our streets, 100,000 illegal vehicles that were being used for crimes.
So we're moving in a direction and dealing with quality of life issues at the same time.
And now, your question, there was a question you asked me.
The retirement cops retired.
So when you look at it, back then, we were having large classes.
Cops now get to their 20-year period.
Many of them are not staying longer.
I stayed for 22 years.
A lot of these younger cops don't want to stay longer.
They have a different mindset.
You know, I was always thinking about overtime, make more money so I could pay for my son's tuition, et cetera.
Many of these cops are not doing that.
This live work balance is important to them.
They hit 20 years.
They say, we're ready to go, ready to get out.
Now, I have to match that.
We're bringing 4,000 more cops to keep up with the attrition problem that we're having.
Then when you add this anti-police energy that's out there that you're hearing all across the countries, cities all across the country, they are struggling with having police officers come in.
We're seeing now larger and larger classes because of what we've done.
And I gave my police officers a fair contract.
The PBA leaders, the SBA, the other union leaders would tell you this mayor has been the fairest mayor we've ever had when it came down to ensuring that these police officers are paid what they deserve for placing their lives on the line.
Yeah, and I'd be curious to know what the number of cops we've had in New York City.
This is wage increases 2017 up 2.25%, 2.5%, 3%, 3.2%, 3.5%, 4% bump that they're getting.
So the entry level right now is what, 42% to 50%.
Is this for New York NYPD, Rob?
That's not a lot of money, man, to be a cop over there.
Yeah, but it bumped, you know, because the salary, after you go to the entry level, you go through the academy.
We pay our officers while they're in the academy.
And then once you get to your first year, you see a substantial increase in the salary by the time you get to your max.
Yeah.
Okay, so around 4,400 now.
Can you see historically, Rob, like how many?
So if I look at 2,000, peak staffing in 2000 for cops, NYPD was 40,000.
2005 was 36,300.
2020, it dropped to 34,000.
23 was 33,000 sworn officers with about 30 on patrol.
Today you're on 33 to 35.
So even today, how much has New York City population increased from 2020?
How much has New York?
About 200,000.
So not that much.
Population increased from 2000 to today.
I'd be curious to know what the population has increased from 2000 to today.
But if you look at that, you had 7,000 more cops in 2000 in New York City than we do today.
Right.
Okay.
And that's 25 years later.
In 2000, the population was 8 million.
Roughly now it's 8,5 million.
So it's increased 5,000.
So 500,000.
So 500,000, say it's increased 6%.
It's increased 6%, but the number of cops has decreased roughly 20%.
Okay, give or take.
So do you see that correlation on some of the crime that's taking place in New York because it's got 7,000 fewer cops today than it had 25 years ago and population has increased 500,000?
Yeah, and think about it for a moment.
Again, when I came in to the police department, we had large classes.
I think my class was over 2,000.
Holy shit.
No, we had large classes.
Those large classes back then, they hit their 20 years.
You see they retire.
Those are big classes.
So you're seeing big classes hit their 20 years.
And what you're finding, in addition to that, we were hemaging cops that were going to different municipalities that were paying them better.
And so I knew I had to get in and sat down with the president of the union, Pat Lynch at the time, and say, I have to stop the hemaging of my offices because they're not getting salaries that are competable.
And we were able to fix that.
And also there was a morale issue.
I mean, we were coming through a time when there was a lot of marching in the street, a lot of anti-police energy that was going on.
Police officers did not feel when they went into battle to save a city that we were not supporting them.
And I had to change that energy to let them know, you do your job.
We're going to be here.
I think you did.
And just so you know, I support that.
We watched it and we loved it because, you know, I love New York.
I'm a minority one of the Yankees.
When I go there and I go to the game, I don't want to, you know, I take my entire family.
We took 50 guys to a game last week.
And so when we go there, we're by the chairman's, you know, by Steinburner Suite right next to him.
We're about everybody.
We love to see.
It's a special place.
You like going to the restaurants.
You like experiencing the whole thing.
I love hearing you saying the Broadway, you know, numbers are up the last 12 months.
But the one thing I would say is when I'm looking at this and I see what cities are lowering the number of cops the most and which one's increasing.
Like if I look at decrease, New York is number one.
Just so you know, the number of cops on how much fewer they have.
New York, Delaware, Idaho, Maine, Louisiana, all have decreased.
Montana, Connecticut, Rhode Island have increased the number of cops.
I think that would be something to consider.
Now, let me go into the next conversation.
Next question I got with you with the city is the following.
Permits.
When you look at real estate, okay, and you go to roads.
And one thing when you're driving around New York, there's a lot of unfinished projects that are kind of sitting around.
And when you look at why, like right now, California, it's a worse time to be Newsome.
You know, no matter how much he tries to spin it, what he's going through in his state with all the stuff that's going on with the Palisades, what happened, Malibu, out of all the homes that went through it, I think only six have been rebuilt.
And only 14% have permits to start rebuilding.
So think about the permit issue that's taking place in California.
You got it as well.
When you look at New York City, and I wonder how much of it is you can do something about, or it's got to be a governor, like a bigger position than you.
The number of highways, over 60% of the highways were built after 1970 in New York City.
They're built, they're built past their expected lifespan, most of these.
So when they build it, they're like, look, this is good to be for 40 years, 50 years, but you guys are kind of playing with fire right now, right?
The Department of Transportation says over 200 city bridges are structurally deficient as of 2024, okay?
The Brooklyn Queen Expressway being one of them, you know, some of these other ones.
Then I said, I'm curious, the average highway compared to other cities.
In New York City, it's 60 to 80 years, the average age.
L.A. is 40 to 60 years.
Houston is 30 to 50 years.
Chicago is 50 to 70 years.
You have the oldest.
And when you look at these numbers, like the oldest of the oldest.
Then when you go to the cost, okay?
Slowest and the most expensive construction timelines in the world.
It takes two to four years compared to some other places, you know, six to 12 months, 12 to 18 months.
To build a mile bridge in your area, the average subway extension in New York City, not bridge, subway extension, $2.5 billion to $3.5 billion per mile compared to Paris.
It's only a half a million per mile.
Seoul is $300 million per mile, $120 per mile in Madrid.
You're five to seven times more than Paris.
So people are sitting there saying, hey, man, we cannot have our city that's the city, the headquarters, financial capital.
But then where do you get the money from?
How do you fund this?
Who do you work with?
How do you get construction companies to work?
How do you put the incentive for people to say, I want to clean up the roads?
And it takes such a long time to go through this.
How do you manage all of this stuff when it comes down to updating your roads?
Because all it takes is one bad accident with a bridge, one bad accident with that.
And then that's a big story everyone's talking about.
Without a doubt, without a doubt.
And as you mentioned, the BQE, these are problems that was kicked down the road for years.
I had and invited Secretary Duffy, Secretary of Transportation, to come and walk with me and see the BQE and the erosion because those type of large projects, we need help and sign off also from the federal government.
And so when you look at some of the roles that you mentioned in the bridges, some is under city, state, and federal.
And we need a combination of those things.
And when I ran for office, I stated that it takes too long and with too much bureaucracy to get things done.
And remember while I was brought up on indictment, I was saying to the FDNY, go goddamn inspect the building.
If you're going to pass it or fail, that's up to them.
But at least go in and do the inspection.
I was hearing on the campaign trail from building owners who was telling me, Eric, to get a fire inspection, it takes years.
And it was my mindset that we have to speed up the bureaucracy because if I have a building owner developing a skyscraper and they have to wait to get an inspection and they have a 200-man crew that they're paying for every day, it just hurts business.
And here's why.
The whole concept of government is a flawed concept in the manner in which if you don't incentivize the action, if I have a person who opened a hotel is paying $35,000 a month in rent, yet they can't have someone come in and turn on their gas and turn on their electricity or come and give them a CFO for an inspection.
And no one is incentivizing.
If government is saying, I'm getting my salary if I open you or not, that's wrong.
I started judging our agencies based on the end product.
How many restaurants did we open?
Not how many citations did you issue?
How many building permits did we approve?
We have to incentivize government and judge based on the end product.
How much control do you have to accelerate permit, the speed of permitting?
Is that influenced on you?
At what level is somebody able to accelerate the speed of people getting permits?
That's a great question.
Part of the problem is the permanency of government.
You know, many people, you know, who don't want to see this productivity, those who are in government, they have a mindset.
We wait you out.
You know, you're here for what, four years, eight years?
I've been here for 35 years.
You know, I've been here for 35 years.
So when you go in and you put your folks at the top, and we have modernized many of our systems.
I have a great chief technology officer.
A lot of this stuff, you could use real good artificial intelligence technology.
Should not have to go through this long series of interactions.
That's what we're attempting to do.
So in three and a half years, we've modernized a lot.
But at the same time, remember, I had to go to those top issues, building the housing, making the city safe.
Well, I guess what I'm trying to say is, can the campaign be that we're going to go through the follow-on permits that are taking so long to get approved because nine people need to sign off?
And here's what we're doing moving forward.
Moving forward, we're going to split the time for campaign because we need to approve the bridges to be rebuilt.
Boom, You know, enough of the business company, you know, buildings that are not being built.
People are sitting on the sidelines.
And one of the reasons why it's not is permitting.
What can be a direct statement that you can make to accelerate people getting permits?
modernizing our system so we don't have all those layers.
And that's what I...
How do you do that?
We're doing that now with Commissioner Jimmy Otto, former borough president, my chief technology officer, Matt Frazier.
We're going in and looking at all of these systems and we're asking the question, do we need all of these layers?
For example, prior to before becoming mayor, we would do something called stop work orders because there's a problem on a job site.
What we've learned, there could be a problem with the carpentry, has nothing to do with the electricity or dealing with the painters or what have you.
So why are we stopping the whole job?
Let's stop the part of the job that's the issue.
And now to get a stop work order of a whole job, you have to get signed off from the hierarchy of the building department.
My contract is to say, Eric, this was a home run for us because they were holding up our jobs.
And that's the same thing we're looking at with building permits and other types of permits as well.
Yeah, I would, Rob, where is New York City in the speed of permits of all the cities in America?
Are you guys known as one of the slowest?
Would you say New York City is awesome?
I would say yes, because we have so many rules and regulations that were put in place, that was put in place not only by the agencies, but safety rules and regulations that were put in place by laws and rules and is this permits, Rob?
Is it zoning permits?
I believe so.
I mean, look at this.
Look at this.
New York City, two to four plus years.
Time for approval, building restriction, very high zoning, reviews, landmark.
You got Houston's zero to six a month.
By the way, Houston just became the number three city in America.
They passed up Chicago.
I believe they did.
If not, they're now Austin six to 12 months.
That's where everybody is moving right now.
You got, you know, Musk is there, a bunch of guys.
Even LA is one or two years.
Miami is years.
Chicago is 12 months.
You guys are two to four years.
Now, let's break that down for a moment because, and here's a solution to it also.
We have all of these different procedures that community groups like the community board must sign off.
There's a lot of latest.
That's a ULEP.
ULERP is the uniform land use process.
So what did we do this year?
We put an amendment on the ballot that will cut that time down to a year.
Voters must vote on it now.
We had an entire, what we call, you know, the review committee come in and look at how we modify the proposal to do this.
Everything from zoning to reviews to landmark to rules.
That's what's on the ballot right now that people will be voting on.
So New Yorkers must determine that, hey, we no longer want to go through this lengthy process.
We knew it was a problem, and that's why we put this battle, this ballot amendment on the ballot.
I think this is very big because, you know, and that's why I asked you when you said Duff, did Duffy end up coming in or he never came?
No, he came.
We walked through together.
He spent a couple of hours.
That's good.
He's the right guy.
So if he came in, this is a big investment for the city.
Yes.
And to show that you can collaborate with the existing administration and get a level of commitment from them that if you get elected, so strategically for me would be if all of a sudden you get a President Trump to say, hey, I love New York City.
If you guys go and support Mayor Adams, we're going to be involved as a federal government to help come clean up New York because I love that place.
I grew up in that place.
But there's no way we're doing that if Mamdani, if there's something like that to be said, and I know he's aggressively not a fan of what Mamdani is doing, but I think this would be very big to me.
Let me go to the second one, concern that I have on seeing how you're handling this.
Business.
When it comes down to business-friendly places for startups, I know you said earlier that a lot of younger engineers are coming in and you were mentioning what's happened with that last couple of years.
When you think about taxes, if you look at business tax-friendly climate, by ranking, I don't know if this is ranked.
I think that's alphabetical, Rob.
But you know what?
We can find a ranking.
You can put that bigger.
And I'll still be able to see the ranking there if you can zoom in a little bit.
Okay, overall, go to the overall rank.
And California is 48th.
California used to be 50th, by the way.
Go all the way down to New York.
You'll see New York is now 49th.
And the only one that's behind them is Jersey.
The worst place for business, all in.
So let's look at the five rankings, Rob, if you can go all the way to the top.
For corporate tax rate, let's see where New York ranks.
Corporate tax rate, New York is a little bit lower, Rob, I can't see it.
24th.
Okay.
Second one, you're 50th.
What's 50th?
Let's go see what's up there.
Individual income tax rank.
Holy shit.
You guys are the worst.
50th.
Okay.
Sales tax rank.
New York.
And again, we're saying state, but you're running for mayor.
So I want to make that distinction.
You got 42.
Then what's the next one?
49.
Go to the next one to see what that is.
Property tax, 49th.
Unemployment insurance tax rank is, where's New York at with that?
Okay, we got 39th.
Okay.
Why would someone choose to build a small business and stay in New York City rather than going and building it in Nashville, Tennessee, in Brentwood, in, you know, Fort Lauderdale, in Bolca, in Miami, in Orlando, in Jacksonville, in Plano, in Prosper.
Why would somebody stay in New York if the tax climate, the regulation, you know, the safety, why would someone stay in New York or even go to New York?
Well, one reason only, it's New York.
You know, when you look at what I hear all the time from my business leaders, the talent, the diversity of talent, when you look at the population, New York City is considered the largest of, largest Ukrainian population, one of the largest Chinese population, largest Spanish-speaking population, largest Indian population.
That diversity of culture also allows you the diversity of creativity.
And what you find in New York, one of the best transportation systems to get anywhere in the city, your workers can get anywhere in the city on a small fraction of a cost.
You don't need a vehicle.
Outside in our outer boroughs, Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, you can find at home this quality of the schools.
Because whenever someone attracts their employees, there's two questions that they ask.
How good are the schools?
How safe is the community?
So when you bring down crime and you have quality schools, you're able to attract that talent.
And particularly young people.
Young people of their entire life is not sitting at an office desk.
Matter of fact, many of them not.
They want to have a nightlife.
They want to have a place that they could engage and meet other young people in a very realistic way.
So I think it has a lot to do with the attractiveness of the city and all that it has.
Yeah, and by the way, one thing we know for a fact, because right now the candidates that are still in it is Cuomo's still in it, right?
He hasn't stepped on it.
So he's still in it.
Mamdani's still in it.
Yourself and a Republican candidate, I always get his last name right, right?
Kurt Sliwa.
You got it right.
And what's his percentage?
Where is he at?
Chris Sliwa, what percentage does he have, Rob?
Do we know?
It moves, you know, these polls move all over the place, you know?
Trying to see where he is at.
So this is showing what this is from who?
This is from Slingshot Strategies.
Yes, you trust Swings.
Is this a trusted source?
Let's go here.
When I ran in 2021, Slingshot Strategies basically said, I can't stand a chance against Andrew Yang, but we're not calling Andrew Yang mayor, right?
No, we're calling you mayor.
So this has, what, this has Mamdani at 35%.
Right, right.
Cuomo at 25, Sliwa at 14%.
And it only has you at 15%.
Right, right.
You know, I think that when I ran in 2021, they had me in fourth place also.
They had me behind, I think, Scott String and someone else in that.
So these polls have a history of not knowing my voters.
You know, my voters, they're not calling for polling.
And the goal is going to be a combination of registering new voters, which is crucial to this race.
And that's what Madani did.
He was successful in registering new voters and for the first time telling my story.
I haven't started camping.
I'm just starting campaigning.
And once I'm able to tell my story, communicate with voters in an authentic way, we know on Victory Day, the only poll that matters is the poll that say you won.
I agree.
If Mamdani wins, this is a big if.
But let's just say Mamdani wins.
And by the way, formidable guy.
People cannot just think it's not going to happen.
Like, you know, sometimes in elections, you know how people say, oh, we have it.
It's a slam dunk.
It's going to be done.
I'm like, wait a minute.
What?
The guy won?
Yes, he did.
If Mamdani wins, what happens to New York City?
Well, first of all, and I agree with you about slam dunks.
Andrew Yang was walking around with a tape measure, measuring the drapes of City Hall.
He just knew he was going to be the mayor.
I knew differently because I know this city.
And I think that if his policies are put in place, if his policies are put in place, and no matter who a candidate is, if you have those policies that are put in place, you're going to hurt small business.
That's a real issue with our small businesses.
We have 700,000 small landlords.
It's going to hurt them if they can never raise rent, although rent rolls are not meeting the repair.
And it's going to hurt.
poorer communities because buildings are going to fall into disrepair.
We saw this before in the 70s and 80s when rent rolls were not reaching what it costs to run a building.
It's going to hurt public safety.
Defunding police, he just announced the other day he's not going to send police officers to respond to domestic violence issues.
Officer Maura and Rivera, two officers that died in the beginning of my administration, they were going to a domestic violence call.
One of the most dangerous calls a police officer can go on is a domestic violence call.
You send civilians there, you are putting their lives in jeopardy.
It hurts public safety to empty out Rikers Island when you have some of the most dangerous criminals that are there if they're on Rikers Island.
When you look at many of his projects that he's put in place, the policies are going to hurt New Yorkers and it's going to hurt low-income New Yorkers, working class New Yorkers, those who he stayed, he represent.
Did you see this young lady who was a former AOC?
Oh my God.
Rob, do you have that clip?
I would just love for the audience to see this.
Do you know who she is or you don't know?
Okay, play this clip, Rob.
Go for it.
So New York City just nominated this guy, Zoron Momdani, who is a socialist to represent them for the mayor's election.
And I, if I was 25, I would be obsessed with Zo Ron.
When I was 25, I was actually 26, 27, I helped get AOC elected.
I made a video for her campaign that went super viral.
I met her a ton of times and I was a huge AOC person.
Now I'm 35 and like every stereotypical person, I've grown up and I've learned that these feel-good politics of promising free food, free college, free apartments, like you get free, you get free, you get free.
It feels so good.
You feel as a young person when your frontal lobe is not fully developed and you're thinking more in black and white that this is going to be good, right?
You're indoctrinated as a young person in America to believe that capitalism is bad and all your problems are because of these evil business owners.
But I have to warn young people who are caught up in the Momdani vibe is that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
And we've seen time and time again in countries and cities that adopt these socialist programs is that the rich people who are going to pay for them are going to leave because of a high taxes.
And then we just get more taxes and less for it.
And one example of this on a smaller scale is in New York in 2019, there was a law that was passed by the state house, all Democrats, to pause rent stabilization on, sorry, to pause rent hikes on rent stabilized apartments so they could no longer rent hike.
So say, for example, an apartment is rent stabilized.
It's had the same tenant since the 1970s.
It comes up for rent.
Landlords, because of this law, can only raise the rent by 2%.
So say in 1970, someone was paying $200 a month.
You're now going to be paying $220 a month in 2025.
But the problem is that rent-stabilized apartment needs to be renovated and brought up to 2025 code.
So because of this law, what's happened is now there are tens of thousands of empty apartments in New York that are rent stabilized that the landlords are not renovating because they know they cannot make their money back if they renovate them.
And again, these landlords are not like evil people.
And when you're indoctrinated into this sort of leftist, oppressor, oppressed mindset, you think like business owners are evil.
They're not.
Many of them are small businesses.
You know, they're living, they're working on a margin.
And so it's not affordable for them, too.
How do you, how do you powerful, powerful, seriously?
Yes, it is.
Because idealism collides with realism.
Running a city is realism.
And we should be ideal.
We should have hope.
We should think about the positivity of the future.
And that's what we believe in.
But running a city, you have to make tough choices.
And if you start saying, a small property owner, 700,000 we have in our city, that you could never raise the rent, what happens is working class people will see the quality of their housing go down.
We've did this before.
Where you had landlords walking away from their properties, creating terrible environments.
And so what she just stated is that we should all remain optimistic.
We should all have hope.
We should all want great things.
But I lived in poverty.
I didn't study it in the school.
And academic elitists that never experienced miss meal cramps don't really know what it's like.
And so just think about your journey.
They're looking at you now.
Everybody's looking at you right now.
This is your glory.
It's not your story.
It's not your story.
And when people see just your glory and don't realize your story, growing up dyslexic was painful for me, undiagnosed until I got to college.
You know, growing up on the verge of homelessness, you know, my mom used to give us, we used to line up at the door.
There were six plastic bags full of clothing, change of clothing for the day, because she thought we were going to come home and we were going to be thrown out.
I used to turn that corner and my stomach would have butterflies in it because I would be humiliated when the marshals were out there.
And anytime I saw a U-Haul truck on the block, I was like, darn it, they're throwing us out.
That makes you think about what people are going through.
And so when you live the luxury life, the reason he thinks about giving everything away for free is because he got everything for free.
Was he raised with a silver spoon in his mouth?
Yes.
And I was an actress.
His dad was an academic person.
This academic elitism is not how you run a city.
And I think she pointed it out well.
Her story.
Oh, absolutely.
She would be somebody I'd bring on the team if I was you.
I'd find out who it is and I would, matter of fact, maybe reach out to them, get a hold of the camp and speak with them.
In regards to Mamdani and New York, so New York City, 9-11, a day we'll never forget, right?
Yes.
You definitely won't forget because I was a lieutenant at the time.
You were a lieutenant at the time?
Yes, yes.
And my brother was a sergeant.
I went down to Ground Zero that night.
And that was a sight that really tore us apart.
It was one of those days that we'll never forget for the rest of our lives.
Here's Bill Ackman posting something about Mamdani's father.
And he says, Zoharan Mamdani, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.
Okay.
These are words from his father, a current professor at Columbia, a school he tried to go to, where on his application, he said he's African-American, black, and Asian.
Rob, if you can click on the picture so I can just read it.
Clearly, the prime objective of suicide bombers is not to terminate his or her own life, but that of others defined as enemies.
We need to recognize the suicide bomber first and foremost as a category of soldier.
Does not the suicide bomber join both aspects of our humanity, particularly as it has been fashioned by political modernty in that we are willing to subordinate life, both our own and that of others, to objectives we consider higher than life.
Suicide bombing needs to be understood as a feature of modern political violence rather than stigmatized as a mark of barbarism.
The danger of moral discussion of itself, how can any culture condone suicide, is that it quickly turns into a replay of culture talks, stereotyping, et cetera, et cetera.
You read this.
It's kind of interesting.
How do you process this?
Well, and I think that's what's important in this election.
Because you and I both know that there are differences of opinions, how people view life and how they see life.
Sure.
And your difference of opinion doesn't make you good or bad.
It's just we think differently.
I don't support that.
And the reason I don't support it doesn't mean there's not going to be others that support it.
But the question we need to ask as New Yorkers right now, does the majority of New Yorkers support that?
Or does the majority of New Yorkers believe suicide bombers are terrorists?
That Hamas is a terrorist group.
That not calling or stating global infidada is wrong.
That's where we are right now.
Do we support the police or we don't support law enforcement?
Do we want people to commit crimes to serve their time or do we want to let them out on the street?
Do we want our high-income earners to stay here to pay their taxes to help with our city or we don't?
So we're just going to, that's the beauty of running against him.
There's no gray areas.
I'm just going to lay out my case for the future of the city to continue to create opportunities for working class people in a safe environment.
Lay out the case.
And New Yorkers are going to have to make the determination.
9% stated what they want.
Now we're going to find out what the other 91% want.
This is very serious because 9-11, when it happened, it happened to, you know, some call New York City the greatest city in the world.
Yes.
When that happened.
Devastating when we saw that.
So do we want the father of the son that may be the mayor of the city to speak like this to make it seem like it's not a big deal?
I don't know.
I think this is concerning.
And when he said about cops just five years ago in a tweet, June of 2020, he tweeted saying, we don't need an investigation to know that the NYPD is racist, anti-queer, and a major threat to public safety.
What we need to do is defund the NYPD.
This is that candidate, just so you know.
Yes.
That's what he said, New York, if you're watching this.
But your deal with New York mayor uses budget tricks to keep as many cops as possible.
No to fake cuts, defund the police.
That's the guy.
That's five years ago.
You don't change a lot.
You change in 10 years.
You change in 20 years.
This is the core, and now he's kind of trying to reposition himself.
But I want to wrap it up with a couple questions, and then we'll finish it up.
I think one thing that's going to be a big curveball for you is the following.
In your city, there was a major trade that happened.
There was a guy that used to play for the Yankees, Juan Soda, that went to the Mets.
How are you going to handle it when the Yankees, let's just say, if Yankees face the Mets this year in the World Series, how is that going to affect the election?
That's catastrophic if you think about it.
You got to take a position.
What are you going to do?
I don't know if you have the picture of my hat that I wore, my hat during the playoffs, the Yankee Mets hat.
Oh, you got one that has both?
Is that what you have?
You know, there's a hat.
Go to images right that I have.
Oh, that's funny.
That's funny.
Were you ever a Yankees guy or no?
Were you ever a Yankees fan?
Once a team is in the playoffs, I am a New Yorker.
But how about regular season?
No, I grew up with the Mets.
Oh, you're a Mets?
Yes, yes, yes, I agree.
So who's your favorite?
Who's your favorite baseball player?
Like, who was your guy, Colin?
Of all time.
Yeah, who's your favorite?
Tommy AG, Ed Crane Pooh, you look at Cleon Jones, Tom McGraw.
Those were good, solid players.
69 was my year.
Wow.
I remember sleeping with Tom Seaver, Jersey, and just hugging it.
You know, I love those players.
Yes.
Wow.
Yes.
Did you play?
Were you a guy that what sport did you play?
I played just about every sport.
That's good.
Basketball, baseball, football.
You know, I enjoy sports.
And sports is important.
You know, my son also played a great deal of sports, soccer, rugby, football.
Respect.
And, you know, it builds that character.
You know, you're going to strike out, but there's other innings.
You know, just think about, think about where I was 15 months ago.
Think about that.
And God is good.
And all I did was get up every day and deliver for the city.
When you do an analysis of the day I was indicted and how much progress we made in the city after that, it showed New York grit.
It's who we are as New Yorkers and really as Americans, because I said to myself, that mother that's living in public housing, no matter what she's going through, she has to get up and feed those children.
And mommy told me that.
She said, listen, get up.
You got to get up.
Never surrender.
Fight for what you believe in.
I believe in the city, and I was sworn to protect them, serve them, and deliver them.
And I was not going to give up no matter what I went through.
Well, we're rooting for New York to make the biggest comeback and be that great city safety, the whole nine.
And it concerns me who this guy is that's running in a big way because everything New York City stands for.
You've always thought about how New York City was with cops on how they cleaned the street with the mobs in the 70s and 80s to what happened in the 2000s with Giuliania, what happened, you know, how clean it was, right?
And then you always think about sports with New York.
New York is sports.
Everything is sports with New York and in entertainment and in finance, private equity, hedge funds.
It's a very, very important city to the fabric of America.
Like truly, it's very, very important.
So I'm excited to see what happens.
But I will tell you, if the Mets and the Yankees go to the World Series and the election has happened at the same time, the amount of eyeballs that's going to be on that city, I hope you're ready for it because it's going to be pounded out if that takes place.
And we got the World Cup coming.
Yeah, I know.
And I think the final is going to be at the Jet Stadium, right?
It's going to be, yes.
And New York and New Jersey put it together.
That's right.
It's an excited time.
I know it is.
I know it is.
Definitely what we're looking for.
We're going to the game.
And folks, if you're watching this and you would like to support the mayor, Rob, if we can please put the website up that we can send them to.
And if you can put it in the chat as well, the website is called Eric2025 with a C. Eric2025.com.
Once again, E-R-I-C2025.com, Eric2025.com.
If you'd like to support him, go to the website.
This is a very, very big election.
The last thing you want is to see New York City turn into the next Detroit and some of these other places.
You need the right people to make sure we keep fighting for making that city great.
