SNEAKO - June 15, 2025SNEAKO's Full Interview With The Mayor Of NYC Eric Adams
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 18 minutes
Words per minute
186.9016
Harmful content
Misogyny
21
sentences flagged
Toxicity
61
sentences flagged
Hate speech
26
sentences flagged
Summary
On this episode of Cigar Talk, the guys talk about the best cigars they've ever had, and how they got them. They also talk about some NFL and the Eagles and much, much more! Cigars are a great way to get to know your hosts better and we hope you enjoy this episode.
Transcript
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What do you call this place? The Mayor's Mansion?
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So he said instead of smoking someone else's cigars,
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Keep the chat open so you can see if there's a problem.
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I went to Cuba to find, to buy an old Gullwing, the Mercedes Gullwing, so you know, the 56.
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So I bought one that's like, you need a full restoration.
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I went to Cuba in quest to find the best cigars.
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Because it's like, the soil's depleted and everything.
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I ended up buying half a volcano in Dicaragua, the best.
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We could do something just to go with the temporary success.
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Let me finish this and I'm going to, you know, put the fillers out.
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Yeah, they only made, we only make, produce about 900 every year.
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You know, you have another lighter, do you, Ma?
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If you have a box, let's grab a box, and I'll drop some off tomorrow.
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If you don't need to go, use water, hang it down.
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I don't, are you, this wasn't in the car, Sally?
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I'm going to need to begin to know which one it is.
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Hold on, but, well, let me see if they got, because I'm almost sure I have some more of this.
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They're leaving it out because it doesn't use, we don't use any fillers in it.
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I actually got my master's and screenwriter and all that.
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Yeah, I was Tyrone and Moose on The Backyard Again.
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And that kind of like gave me my bread and I started making like documentaries and like
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feature films and stuff and then I went off to school and everything for it.
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I'm a secret agent and we're trying to stop Cloud Chase and Zonis.
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And I make music so they send me on missions to go perform at different spots.
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And like if people like the music too much, they start turning into zombies and I got
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So when you go and check the hip-hop music, that's cool.
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You can hash it all the way here in the Asheville floor.
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Yeah, this is probably going to take an hour or so.
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It's not just because it's my company, but it's the world's finest.
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Like I've had every single major hotel all over the world is carrying it.
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So we're live right now where this is the mayor's mansion.
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Thank you again for having us, smoking some cigars.
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You're a busy guy, so I appreciate you taking the time to do this right now.
00:08:03.620
And, you know, part of being able to stay busy is to do this.
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At the end of the night, you know, sometime with my son, we'll sit out on the porch and
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smoke a cigar and just, you know, really just bring down that temperature because it's
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Being a mayor is hard, but being a mayor of New York is a mayor on steroids.
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The prestige of the New York mayor is unlike any other in the United States.
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And across the globe, you know, we have the UN here, so you have people from across the
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And, you know, just as the role as the mayor of being able to visit a lot of different countries,
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you know, being back and forth to Africa seven times, China six times, South, Central America,
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And so when I meet people and they know that I have enough respect to go visit their homeland,
00:09:07.440
then they come here and they embrace their adopted land, you know.
00:09:11.940
But nothing's better than a good cigar and good conversation.
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They're getting it from the, from the car right now.
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But this is definitely, you know, BCK's, you know, the Billionaires Club.
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So it's eight, seven years, world's finest, comes in a volcanic section of Nicaragua.
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It's more of a passion, more than a profitable avenue for me.
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But I just wanted to have the world's finest, and that's where it is.
00:10:09.440
Was it yesterday the first time that you were able to meet Amber?
00:10:12.920
Yeah, you know, and, and, you know, what's interesting is that, you know, a lot of people,
00:10:18.920
they judge each other based on longevity instead of character and energy.
00:10:24.680
I'm a big energy person, and when I sat down, she was with a good friend of mine,
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and we, we sat down and just, was just kicking it for a moment.
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People would look at Amber, and they'd see her physical appearance, but the anatomy of
00:10:46.980
And I think it's, I think it's part of your life story.
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You know, like I said earlier, people, they know our story, our glory, they don't know
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I do get judged a lot on the internet for my story.
00:11:03.540
But it always, for a woman, excuse me, it's always harder, our triumph and like things
00:11:10.860
that we go through being in survival mode.
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Sometimes we get the shitty end of the stick on the internet.
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But I, you told me a little bit about your story growing up.
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I don't know if a lot of people know, you know, the stuff that you've been through growing
00:11:25.240
And, and it's, you know, it's that evolution and it made me who I am.
00:11:31.440
You know, uh, the most, um, powerful parts of that journey is that I'm not supposed to
00:11:37.420
be here to mayor of the greatest city on the globe, you know, growing up.
00:11:41.240
I, you know, Amber, I used to walk inside my classroom.
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I used to get up every morning and I would say, you know, God, please don't make me read.
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Because if I read that day, all the children in the school, they would mimic me reading.
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And laugh, I would be in the cafeteria, the gym.
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They said, let's, let's act like we're reading, you know, because I was undiagnosed dyslexic.
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And, you know, I was stumbled over the drawers.
00:12:05.660
And I think, I think one or two of the teachers would intentionally have me get up and read.
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But, uh, they used to have on the back of the chair, I walk in the classroom, they would
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have dumb students on the back of the, back of the chair.
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And I just said, you know, why am I even going to school going through this?
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And then around 15, I said, why am I, I'm not even going back in.
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I, you know, started just hustling, running, running numbers, buying the nickel bags, making
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And then at 15, my brother and I got arrested, you know, and, um, the cops took us to the
00:12:51.920
103rd precinct where they, they, they kicked us in our groin over and over and over again.
00:13:01.880
I didn't tell my mother until I became an adult.
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You know, I, you know, I sat down and shared it with her.
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And the most powerful part about it is when mommy came to the precinct, the 103rd precinct,
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She came in the precinct, you know, hugging her Bible and carrying in one hand.
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My brother and I, we both got arrested together.
00:13:40.280
I sold mommy into slavery and I'm going to buy her back.
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You know, you know, you know how back in the day when, when your family members in slavery,
00:13:48.740
you were, you were earning back and buy their freedom.
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And I went on a four, I like to say a four payment plan.
00:13:56.760
The first payment I paid when I became a captain in that same police department.
00:14:01.240
Second payment came when I became a state senator.
00:14:04.500
Third payment came when I became the first black law president.
00:14:07.340
And I was paid in full and I became the mayor, you know?
00:14:15.080
When did you decide you wanted to go into politics?
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88th precinct is in Clinton, it's Clinton Hill.
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Matter of fact, Mike Tyson Miro used to be up in Brownsville.
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I grew up in Queens and then returned back to Brooklyn.
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And what happened was, one day I was doing midnights in the 88th precinct.
00:14:58.820
And there was an 11-year-old boy that was arrested either two or three times in one week
00:15:08.240
And when I came into the precinct, I saw him there cursing everybody out.
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He was at the front desk when you come in to get processed.
00:15:16.760
And he's cursing everybody out, calling people in Memphis, calling this, calling this.
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And so I said, you know, I told him, I told him, you know, they had to process him.
00:15:24.340
They put him in the juvenile room, handcuffed him to the bar.
00:15:27.780
And later that night, I said, what's up, Richie?
00:15:35.140
And so I told him, when I went to him, and I said, oh, hey, you got another lighter?
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And I was like, I was like, yo, young soldier, you've been arrested several times for armed robbery.
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He spit at me, cursed at me, you know, F you, F you.
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Later that night, I went to the soda machine, brought him some soda and some snacks.
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I said, you need anything else, you know, young blood.
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You know, why are you getting caught up like this?
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His mom was on crack, you know, on the streets.
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He was at the school for months and no one checked him.
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And so I remember that day so clearly because I said, you know what?
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By the time he's arrested, he's already downstream.
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We should have taken our asses upstream and prevented him from falling in the river.
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And I said, I can't do this just by being a cop.
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And I've always felt that you've got to do something differently.
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And it's almost 40 years ago, I woke up in a cold sweat.
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I woke up in a cold sweat where God said, you're going to be the mayor January 1st, 2022.
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And I would tell everybody I met, people used to think I was on medication.
00:17:24.580
Everyone I saw throughout the years, I said, listen, I'm going to be mayor January 1st, 2022.
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And everybody that knew me because it was the message I got from that feeling from God was let everybody know.
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Because I don't want anybody to think you stumbled on it.
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Because people got to believe, and my belief in God is so strong, in the ancestors.
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Every night before going to bed, I give thanks to my ancestors and I give thanks to God.
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In spite of all obstacles, if you could have somebody perfectly imperfect like me go from arrested, rejected, dyslexic,
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and now elected to be the mayor of the biggest city, that's only God.
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I could have been elected to a small town somewhere, but no, he said, I'm going to elect you to the most important city on the globe.
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So, if a cat is sitting on Riker's right now, they can say, wait a minute, my man was in jail.
00:18:32.060
If somebody's sitting in school, they have a learning disability, they say, my man had a learning disability.
00:18:36.000
If someone is in a homeless shelter, see, my man was homeless.
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So, I think God has used my life to say to people, no matter where you are, it's not who you are.
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You know, and that's what really impacted when I met you.
00:19:02.580
And every day, people are overcoming adversity.
00:19:06.740
And then when you look at the journey, you know, when I was studying to become a lieutenant, somebody pulled up next to my car, and they called out my name, and I looked to the left just in time, and they had a 9mm.
00:19:17.800
As a matter of fact, Jordan, you was just born, you was just a baby.
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They had a 9mm shot at my car, and I hit the gas fast enough that it just shot the back of my window.
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And a bunch of older African-American women, when they saw the story in the paper, they came, and they were just praying for me in front of my house, you know, after what happened.
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But when you look at that, and that's why what people say right now, you know, when you got indicted, Eric, you were still waking up doing the job, you know.
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Man, you know how much shit I went through?
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Do you still feel like, because sometimes with me, I still feel like, even though I've been out of it for a long time, that I still sometimes feel like I'm in survival mode.
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Like, I wake up in the middle of the night, and I'm like, there's things that I have to do.
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Like, I think about the next day, and I think about, because that's been most of my life.
00:20:27.340
But, you know, because we still are in survival mode.
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We are still, you know, I'm still fighting every day.
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You know, when you look at what I'm trying to do in the city, and, you know, many people didn't want me to be elected to be mayor.
00:20:46.580
You know, I mean, I'm a bald-headed, earring-wearing mayor.
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There's never been a bald-headed, earring-wearing mayor.
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And you inspire me, because I'm bald-headed, and I wear earrings.
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You're probably the most relatable mayor that I've seen in my lifetime.
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So, yeah, he's trying to pose as, like, this Italian New Yorker, but he's really from
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Boston, and, you know, but you're clearly, one thing, people will say a lot of things
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You're very clearly a New Yorker born and bred.
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When I walk, when I walk into my press conferences, I'm playing.
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Who are your top three favorite New York artists?
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Uh, uh, Biggie, uh, uh, Jay-Z, um, I like Ja Rule as well.
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Nas, Nas, you know, Nas has a message in his music.
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And he, he, what I love what Nas did, Nas took the music and turned it into a business.
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Um, there, there's a couple of, you know, uh, up and coming, uh, young, uh, musician and
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Um, I forgot my brother's name that we lost his life in, in California.
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And he was Pop, Pop Smoke, Pop Smoke, Pop was, was, was so talented, man.
00:23:00.700
Um, he was, he was on his way to my house the next day because he wanted to bleach one
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And he, and I saw him out and he was like, how you get your hair so well?
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And I, he was going to come to my house the next day.
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And that morning I woke up and I saw it on the news and I couldn't believe it.
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So he, he, you know, I met him many years ago before.
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Like, what should I, you know, he's like, you blows and stuff.
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And the day before we were going to look, he asked me, he says, come on, come to California.
00:24:19.320
And I got a call from Steven Victor the following day and said, you know.
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So my son's father was business partners with Steven Victor.
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But that's how I knew Pop Smoke through Steven Victor.
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Because that drill era, I mean, it started in Chicago, but New York really took it to another level.
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Do you think it had an effect on the culture of crime?
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And let me, you know, because Jordan and I talk about this often.
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You know, it's not the music, it's how the music is being exploited.
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When you talk about urinating on somebody's grave right after they die, when you talk about, you know, some of the music being used to feed the violence.
00:25:09.400
Because the artistry, I had a group, I had a meeting at City Hall with all of the top drill music, Mayno put it together for me.
00:25:19.140
And, you know, when they understood what I was saying and I was able to show them the correlation where you had a shooting in one morning and then the next morning you had people desecrated in the grave of the person and his crew got upset.
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Then you had another shooting in the afternoon.
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And so the industry is using that violence to sell records and is using that violence for notoriety.
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And we're using our, we're losing our young soldiers.
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So do the music, you know, but if, if, if, if you could only imagine if God forbid someone took out my son and the next thing you know I see you on YouTube talking about how happy you are to take out a son.
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And that's what the, that's what the industry was doing.
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And we, you know, we had a conversation with the industry and say, you know, you guys are making paper, but I'm seeing too many, you know, too many bodies lying, that's lining up because of what you are exploiting on social media.
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It's about when it's used for retaliatory action, taking out other young people.
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Because we're, we're losing a whole generation, man, to, to this violence.
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And, you know, young people at that age, they have so much heart, you know, and when that heart turns into taking out another young person, that can't happen.
00:26:39.760
The New York drill music was really big post-COVID.
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Because I, I personally, I feel a lot safer walking around, taking the train than today, than I did 2020, 2021.
00:26:52.800
Let me, let me tell you what's happening in the city.
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I inherited a city where crime was off the hook in the trains, over proliferation of guns on our streets, particularly in communities of color.
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You know, things were just, just off the chain.
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Right now, three years, three years later, they told me it was going to take me five years to turn around the city.
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Three years later, we have more jobs in New York in the city's history.
00:27:22.740
We dropped unemployment around black and brown people by 20%.
00:27:30.540
This last six months, five months, and we're going to do it in the sixth, we had the lowest number of shootings and homicides in the history of the city.
00:27:41.920
Every other major crime, robbery, burglary, grand loss, everything is decreasing.
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And so you feel, the goal is to make people safe statistically, but also feel safe.
00:27:55.260
You know, we got 4.6 million people that ride out subway every day.
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4.6 million, we only have five felonies on our subway every day.
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But what has happened in the city is you wake up every day and you see the worst thing that happens in the city of 8.5 million people.
00:28:12.280
And you say to yourself, oh my God, this stuff is out of order.
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Our nightlife, Richie, as you know, our nightlife, restaurant open.
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People say, well, you know what, you hang out all the time.
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I got to make sure, because if my restaurants are open, my private clubs are open, my clubs are open, then my waiters, my busboys and girls, my cooks.
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The hospitality industry employs a lot of people.
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You know, I come to New York maybe like once a year, and I've been here for a week, and it is cracking out here.
00:29:04.780
You know, there's a huge difference from Los Angeles to New York.
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We do a lot of entertainment on the 10th, you know, a lot of cultural events, Diwali, African-American, Juneteenth.
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I made Juneteenth a paid holiday here in the city.
00:29:34.940
So this is a place where people never were able to come here the way it is now, you know.
00:29:49.800
It's about being mayor is substantive and symbolic.
00:29:54.480
The substantive is bringing down crime, bringing jobs, and all that good stuff.
00:30:01.240
Like last year, I got re-baptized on Rikers Island, our jail, with the inmates.
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I was on the road with all the inmates, and I got re-baptized with Reverend Sharpton and Reverend Daughtry, you know, who was one of my spiritual leaders.
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And those inmates sitting on that road with those brothers, and they say, you know, the mayor's here getting baptized with us.
00:30:24.520
You know, I've been on Rikers Island more than any man in the history of the city, you know, because remember I said I'm dyslexic.
00:30:30.480
But 30 to 40 percent of those inmates have a learning disability.
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So the real crime is not only what they did on the street.
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The real crime is that we didn't give them the resources that they needed.
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Because I could have easily kept, you know, selling weed.
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If I didn't stumble and learn I was dyslexic, I don't know where I would be right now.
00:30:57.900
Is part of your objective getting the New Yorkers who left to come back?
00:31:02.420
I was born here, and then after COVID, when things really, the city was shaky for a while.
00:31:06.720
I left to Florida for two years, and I recently came back in December.
00:31:10.660
And things seem to be on the right track, and I love it again.
00:31:13.960
But how much of your goal as mayor is trying to get people who went to Texas, went to Florida?
00:31:21.960
And I like to say this is a, you know, a paraphrase Arnold Schwarzenegger moment.
00:31:41.300
You know, because we're falling, people are falling in love again with New York.
00:31:46.140
No matter where you go on the globe, we have the best food, the best diversity, you know, a great educational system.
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Our streets are getting cleaner and cleaner every day, safety.
00:32:00.120
And what many people don't want to acknowledge, we have the best shorties.
00:32:32.080
I have my kids out there, so that's all they know is L.A.
00:32:52.360
And I was staying on Sarah Street off of, like, North Pass, Alameda.
00:32:55.860
So I used to ride my bike through Sherman Oaks all the time, man.
00:33:44.900
So, I used to tell my friends, and they'll tell you to this day, because I'm still friends
00:33:50.260
with a lot of people that have been like 30 years.
00:33:53.500
And I was about 10 years old, and my friends would be like, when I'm 16, I'm going to have
00:34:02.980
And I used to be like, I'm going to live in Hollywood, and I'm going to be famous,
00:34:07.080
and I'm going to get the hell up out of here, and I'm going to have a better life.
00:34:11.240
And I used to say that all the time, and my friends, my friends, yeah, my friends used
00:34:15.400
to be like, girl, you're delusional, you, you know, I was homeless with my mom when I
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And, and they used to say, you don't have nowhere to live, you're going from house to
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house, you know, trying to get, we used to get, there was a Chinese corner store,
00:34:34.860
And I used to go get, you know, two chicken wings, maybe a little fried rice.
00:34:39.500
If I had a couple dollars, or I would get a, maybe if I had a dollar, I would get a
00:34:47.240
And I just, I don't know, I guess kind of like what you said, how you used to pray and
00:34:52.920
manifest it, and it happened because there was no other option for you.
00:34:58.840
I felt like there was no, I didn't know how it was going to happen.
00:35:03.840
And it just, it happened in a way that I did not expect, but I just knew that I wanted
00:35:13.360
You know, and, you know, living homeless or the verge of homeless, to push through that
00:35:26.600
Her mom committed suicide in front of her when she was 10 years old.
00:35:34.520
So, my uncle was in prison for murder, and then he got out of prison, overdosed and died.
00:35:45.260
Yeah, he did 38 years, and they let him out, and then he got out.
00:35:54.540
So, my whole family's pretty much dead from overdoses, which is why I've never done a
00:36:08.280
And I think that was a blessing for me, in a sense, going to a lot of funerals and seeing
00:36:17.260
It made me never want to touch a drug in my life, and it really saved my life.
00:36:26.180
I'm telling it on stream now, but, yeah, I never really told that story because, again,
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I just, I let people talk shit about me on the internet.
0.98
00:36:42.220
I can deal with people talking shit on the internet, but it provides me a life that I've
0.93
00:36:50.200
And you know what's interesting, you know, whenever you campaign, you have to, you go
00:36:56.880
out in the street, you hand out flyers, you tell, you know, we have information about
00:37:01.840
And I'll never forget when I was campaigning to become a state senator.
00:37:05.320
You get up early in the morning, you'll give out thousands and thousands of flyers.
00:37:08.960
And people would take it and look at it and see, oh, man, this is the Brother 400 Black,
00:37:16.680
And then that one person would take my flyer and look at it and throw it on the floor and
00:37:22.460
I would forget about the thousand that had nothing but positive affirmation.
00:37:35.160
And we have to learn how to ignore the critic and focus on people who are showing you love.
00:37:44.280
The good people, yeah, that are showing you love.
00:37:47.140
And nothing personifies it more than the internet.
1.00
00:37:51.260
I mean, the social media, I mean, you have a whole bunch of losers, man.
0.98
00:37:57.040
That are trying to, that's trying to, they look at you and they probably, their life is
0.98
00:38:04.640
Instead of saying to themselves, let me learn from what Amber did.
00:38:08.480
You know, let me reach out to her and say, hey, sister, what are some of the positive things
00:38:16.300
If people spend their energy doing that, they won't be in that dark place that you're in.
00:38:24.080
I realized that a comment on social media is not as bad as how my life was growing up.
00:38:31.540
So, it just, you know what, it conditioned me for this life that I have now.
00:38:39.580
Because I said, okay, you know, I'm bald, I look like Mr. Clean, okay, cool.
00:38:42.800
You know, that doesn't compare to what I've been through in my life, so I can laugh it
00:38:49.720
And, you know, just text them back and say, you look like Mr. Clean's grandmother.
00:38:58.520
You know, Jordan and I are going to get a tattoo.
00:39:11.420
I was going to say, I'm going to lie right there.
00:39:13.000
Because I always said, I was going to live in Hollywood.
00:39:17.700
That is a really bad portrait of my mom that I need to get fixed.
00:39:21.960
Because that really doesn't look like her, and I'm mad at the tattoo article.
00:39:30.240
They were like my first children, before I had children.
00:39:33.360
They actually recently just died in the last two years.
00:39:46.180
I got Slash from Guns N' Roses because he's biracial like me.
00:39:51.520
And I was just always a huge fan my whole life of Slash.
00:39:55.500
And he has a black mom and a white dad as well.
00:40:14.500
Sometimes it was difficult because I'm more white passing.
00:40:24.020
And then they would see my mom and they would be like, girl, you're adopted.
1.00
00:40:46.580
My dad's Moroccan-French and my mom's Puerto Rican.
00:40:56.000
My dad is half black and quarter Jewish, quarter white.
00:41:18.160
Well, you know, and I always talk about when I, when I walk around City Hall at night.
00:41:25.160
In City Hall, you have all the mayors, their portraits are up on the wall.
00:41:30.220
And routinely I walk around and I stop at David Dinkins' picture because David Dinkins was
00:41:40.800
He was the only other mayor of color in the city of New York.
00:41:50.380
And I stand in front of this picture and I just, you know, I've talked with him.
00:41:54.620
I, you know, it's, it's, the weight is unbelievable.
00:41:58.740
And, you know, God, I believe God, whatever I went through, he prepared me for this moment.
00:42:06.760
And it's, it's challenging because, you know, people don't think that you're able to, you
00:42:13.780
know, to overcome, you know, Hey man, I didn't go to Harvard and Yale.
00:42:28.200
So, you're, you're, you're, you're never, you are, you are too black for others and you're
1.00
00:42:36.020
You know, so you're always in, you're always in this place where, um, yeah, you drop black
1.00
00:42:42.660
unemployment, you know, yeah, you gave high speed broadband and nice to deserve this.
00:42:47.160
You paid off college tuition for foster care of children.
00:42:50.540
But there's always, when you have other people telling your story, then people don't really
00:42:57.900
And so that's why, that's why it's powerful what, you know, what you're doing, Amber, and
00:43:02.060
what you're doing, because what, one of the positives of social media, you can bypass
00:43:12.300
You know, I'm no longer dependent on those who control the narrative.
00:43:17.160
Now I can sit down with someone like you, where you can stream and you can hear the
00:43:20.900
long version and not the soundbite, you know, and people are, you know, I've, I've done,
00:43:30.540
Walking around on this, um, don't remember his name, but that was pretty interesting.
00:43:38.180
We had a nice conversation when he sat down and he had a powerful, so Philly too.
00:43:42.680
He had a powerful story, you know, with his family, similar.
00:43:45.620
Uh, and, uh, now he's doing his stream and just having real conversations.
00:43:49.820
People need real, authentic conversations, you know, and that's my goal, man.
00:43:55.960
My goal is so the next person that comes after me, they know they can do it and they don't
00:44:03.240
People, people are, people are going to critique you.
00:44:07.260
They're going to say all sorts of negative things, no matter what you do.
00:44:11.580
And you're right, it does give a voice to a lot of losers that before the internet,
00:44:27.360
Like you see what's playing out on our streets right now, you know, in, um, in America,
00:44:33.840
I mean, you had two people today, um, elected officials that were assassinated.
00:44:40.280
They went to their homes, they assassinated, uh, the wife and the husband, all because
00:44:51.060
That's, that's, that's, that's, that is the level of hate, man.
00:44:56.460
You know, you talk about your mother going through, uh, mental health issues.
00:45:04.280
When you're in a dark place, you want to, you want to hurt yourself and you want to hurt
00:45:15.140
You know, can I, because people do say that, right?
00:45:25.000
Because I feel like there's so many, I'm hurt, you were hurt, I'm sure you were hurt.
00:45:30.900
Yeah, because it's like, that's a powerful statement.
00:45:37.080
We didn't, we didn't go out and kill people because we felt bad.
00:45:41.180
You know, I just, you know, and I hate to be insensitive.
00:45:49.600
Some of the most privileged people kill people.
00:45:53.780
Some of the most, some of the richest people in the world hurt people.
00:46:00.300
So you don't do that to others because you know how it feels.
00:46:03.500
So I feel that if you're hurt and you go through a lot of mental trauma, whatever, you actually
00:46:09.220
I'm a better mother because of what my mother went through.
00:46:12.560
I'm a better mother to my children because I don't make the same mistakes my mother did
00:46:21.840
So when you're hurt, you want to not hurt people.
00:46:29.320
And it's really true because it's like, who cares about a political view?
00:46:33.480
When I, when I endorsed Donald Trump, I still had a bunch of friends.
00:46:37.040
My personal assistant that's been with me for 10 years, he voted for Kamala.
00:46:45.980
You're allowed to make your own decisions and who you want to vote for.
00:46:51.840
But I, I feel like a lot of the times it's like, let's just have different political views.
00:47:01.440
Why did you decide, you know, um, to go with Donald?
00:47:08.560
What, what, what, what was the reason that you said, you know what?
00:47:14.000
And you decided that, hey, now I want to go with.
00:47:15.980
I posted a picture of a trash, overflowing trash can.
0.64
00:47:23.000
So, my political views changed drastically because I felt slighted.
00:47:33.360
And when I saw the five second clips of him saying things and I'm like, oh, this is a bad guy.
0.97
00:47:41.800
And then I saw the whole clip and I'm like, oh, y'all really played in my face.
00:48:01.540
At that club, there's more black people working.
00:48:14.300
I talk to my friends and they're like, he hates Mexicans.
00:48:19.560
Just stay out of politics, girl, because you don't know nothing.
1.00
00:48:23.780
It's like, I don't understand how you can't look at everything and then make a decision.
00:48:38.240
And so, you know, when I got indicted, and a lot of people, no one really read the indictment.
00:48:47.940
I was indicted because I called the fire department and asked them to do a building inspection for a building that we were trying to get open because the president of the country was coming here.
00:49:02.180
And when I texted the commissioner, I said, can you have somebody go do an inspection?
00:49:08.140
And if you can't, let me know and I'll manage their expectations.
00:49:11.400
They said, well, Turkey upgraded you when you flew.
00:49:18.640
And they said, we're now saying that you committed bribery because you called the fire department and you pressured them to inspect the building, not to pass the inspection.
00:49:38.160
He was on the campaign trail saying, look what they're doing to this guy.
00:49:42.720
He identified with what happened to his family.
00:49:50.160
We never met, but he was saying, look what they're doing to that man in New York.
00:49:53.460
So what do you think was the reason that you were targeted like that?
00:49:57.060
We had an overflow of migrants and asylum seekers coming to the city.
00:50:12.380
I went back and forth to Washington and saying, listen, this is not sustainable.
00:50:19.720
And each time I went, they didn't do anything about our border.
00:50:25.960
And after 10 trips to Washington, after playing with the President, they didn't want to listen.
00:50:33.820
And I said, listen, they told me, be a good Democrat, be quiet.
00:50:40.280
And when I started criticizing them, all of a sudden, you know, they stepped to me.
00:50:52.100
But you need to talk about how they've been chasing you just about all of my life.
00:50:59.300
From some time, the FBI has always been chasing you.
00:51:02.980
And me not being a politician, being on the outside and watching everything, you've been
00:51:10.420
You have been making sure the city has been booming, like, entertainment-wise.
00:51:13.420
So it makes no sense for anyone to come after you for some tickets on a plane, for some international
00:51:18.720
stuff when you're already Mr. International with New York City.
00:51:23.740
I'm only saying it because I'm not a politician.
00:51:27.180
You poked your chest out and they got mad about it.
00:51:35.380
And then when I saw what the Democratic Party did to rig it against him, I voted for Trump.
00:51:39.400
So it seems like you're no longer part of the Democrat Party.
00:51:44.780
I'm running on the independent line for office.
00:51:50.800
I believe that it should be what your principles are and what you should stand for.
00:51:57.240
Because a Democrat is not a monolithic party where everyone believes the same thing.
00:52:01.680
You know, 79% of New Yorkers agree with me that if you are undocumented and you commit
1.00
00:52:07.300
a violent crime after you save your time, you should be the board.
00:52:14.960
And, you know, what's interesting, those violent Venezuelan gang members, like I went
1.00
00:52:19.980
down to Ecuador, Colombia, and Mexico to talk to the people down there.
00:52:25.320
They said, these violent gangs are destroying us.
00:52:29.120
And many of them made their way up here through our borders.
00:52:32.960
And when we decided that, listen, you can't stay in this country if you are violating your
00:52:41.720
And those gangs are preying on women, they're forcing them into prostitution, they're taking
00:52:45.500
their papers and forcing them into prostitution, they're threatening their family members at
0.93
00:52:53.760
And so there's a, in a Democratic Party, the far left of our party embraced the belief that
00:53:00.460
no matter what you do, you should still be able to remain there.
00:53:09.920
It's when it's so absurd that they're allowing crime, they don't, they look the other way.
00:53:29.840
Dad, I'm going to talk to you about the feminist movement, but Amber, I'm going to talk to you
0.93
00:53:35.840
How do y'all feel about the feminist movement in New York City as far as women being empowered,
00:53:42.920
women finding great jobs, and women being figures in this city to be a staple?
1.00
00:53:52.780
Okay, so the slut walk was very misconstrued.
1.00
00:53:56.380
They thought I was promoting promiscuity to young girls to be sluts.
1.00
00:54:04.280
We raised a lot of money to help women that were survivors of sexual assault and rape.
00:54:13.020
We donated to Trevor Project, which was about young gay kids that wanted to commit suicide
1.00
00:54:18.540
because their families didn't accept them.
0.96
00:54:20.840
So we did all the right things in slut walk.
0.97
00:54:23.740
The name slut walk just, I mean, people just didn't want to research it and they just assumed
00:54:30.600
Um, so that's one of the reasons why I stopped doing it.
00:54:34.060
And also, um, I'm no longer a feminist because men and women are not equal.
0.88
00:54:44.180
We're never going to be equal in a lot of ways.
00:54:50.320
Um, I feel like if there was no men on the planet, women would probably suffer in a lot
1.00
00:54:58.300
We would suffer too if there was no women here.
1.00
00:55:06.560
Um, and, um, you know, I, I think that, um, I personally believe in gender roles.
00:55:17.020
Um, but yeah, I'm no longer a feminist for that reason, which is why Sneaker was just
1.00
00:55:24.940
Um, because what we initially believed in on the left is no longer that it's more leaning
00:55:32.880
Um, just common sense, logic, things of that nature.
00:55:42.900
Because you, you, you, you voted, you said, you know, Bernie Sanders in the primary.
00:55:48.380
And then switched and voted for Trump in 2016 and 2024.
00:55:55.660
And, and, and, and, and, and so similar to what they did with Bernie, they did with Biden.
00:56:05.040
First of all, it's clear now that they knew that he was, you know, dealing with some cognitive
00:56:10.480
And, and the, the, the whole, the institution covered it up.
00:56:22.180
You know, people don't want, there's a book I tell everybody about.
00:56:26.080
Cash Patel's book, um, uh, uh, government gangsta.
00:56:31.880
I'm telling you, people, every American should read that book because there is a, you could,
00:56:37.560
they use the terminology of deep state, whatever term you want.
00:56:42.060
There's a permanent government that's connected.
00:56:49.320
The government officials have been in the gang for 30, 40 years.
00:56:54.000
And when they, let me tell you something, Amber, when they come at you, man.
00:57:05.500
You know, look, I mean, what are you going to do?
00:57:25.680
It's based on Steve Cohen, the owner of the net, the nets, they say.
00:57:30.000
Yeah, yeah, yeah, very, think about this for a moment.
00:57:33.460
Here in New York, there's a prosecutor's office that's called the Southern District.
00:57:39.960
One of the most powerful prosecutor's office, and all of them, they, they are, they openly
00:57:48.120
And, you know, solvent means you answer to no one.
00:57:54.660
They don't feel the answer to their voice in Washington.
00:58:08.240
Andrew and Tristan Pate right now are getting prosecuted by the Southern District Court of
00:58:17.020
They moved it to New York because of what he just said.
00:58:26.660
You know, everyone, the president answers to some.
00:58:31.780
He has to go through the Congress and the Senate.
00:58:34.080
As the man, if I want something done, I have to go through the state and I have to go through
00:58:40.280
America is based on a principle that no one is solvent.
00:58:43.480
So when you have an entity with that much power that states that we answer to no one,
00:58:56.140
And that's, that solvent mindset is what rolled on me.
00:58:59.640
They were planning, you know, they were planning to, I was at the marathon and I was going,
00:59:06.160
I was holding the tape for the runners that come across.
00:59:08.800
They were planning to go surround me and take my phones while all the cameras are on me
00:59:23.000
It seems like you still want to stay, you don't want to lose your position.
00:59:27.840
Well, you know, I turn on, every day I turn on my GPS.
00:59:45.880
But if God wants me to be the mayor, I'm going to do my job and let him do his job.
00:59:51.140
And when you wake up with that belief, you no longer live in fear.
01:00:02.020
You know, like I said, when you look at the journey, you know, there were many times where
01:00:09.080
And I'm just, I know what I've done for the city that I love.
01:00:13.440
I know how good I've been for the city that I love.
01:00:16.520
And I'm not going to wake up every day and say, what if I'm no longer going to do this?
01:00:19.860
Because there's always going, God is always going to have something for me to do.
01:00:23.460
So I'm looking to be reelected because the city needs to continue what we accomplish.
01:00:49.960
I got to be into a lot to do what I've had to learn disability.
01:00:54.560
Your name is on the lips of every prominent person in this country.
01:01:23.900
But I will say, what do you feel like New York is missing that you want in the city?
01:02:14.300
You know, this is a city that never sleeps, so, you know, we shouldn't even be taking a nap.
01:02:22.640
And what I've learned from my policing days is that this city is broken into mornings, afternoons, and overnights.
01:02:31.120
And we need to feed all three of those entities.
01:02:35.740
Because, you know, like, you know, I think one of you said, like even in your club business, you know how many people you employ?
01:02:44.240
And those people who are trying to make their way is crucial.
01:02:54.020
And so, but I think outside of that, we need a 24-hour district.
01:03:11.860
If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere.
01:03:14.160
Richie says, if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere.
01:03:18.860
It's not about any other city or any other country or any other place in the world.
01:03:28.960
And they'll be in the room arguing who's number two, who's number three.
01:03:40.200
One of the things that the mayor did was the crypto.
01:03:58.500
Tom Eyre is going to tell us about the plan for the crypto as a crypto capital.
01:04:23.960
It was probably like $15,000, $19,000 when you got paid at it.
01:04:38.100
But we really want to lean into blockchain, Bitcoin, and particularly those who have family
01:04:48.720
They could use Bitcoin, their digital assets to send money back home to their loved ones
01:04:54.640
and without paying those exorbitant fees from doing so.
01:04:58.800
And so I'm really focused on, I want my young people to learn in earlier grades about AI,
01:05:07.700
about Bitcoins, about, you know, blockchain, because this is an industry that's open, particularly
01:05:33.280
I was doing YouTube for 10 years before that, so I've been doing content for a long time.
01:05:38.460
I've always wanted to speak up and, you know, have my voice heard and make films, so I'm
01:05:51.280
I lived in Harlem before I got a nice apartment here.
01:06:07.000
I used to work at Sue's Rendezvous in Mount Vernon.
01:06:11.580
Yeah, that's where, that's how I initially got out of Philly.
01:06:18.820
And I wasn't a famous model, so I still had to work.
01:06:23.900
So I worked at Sue's Rendezvous, and that would make extra money, and I would send money back
01:07:22.260
I mostly grew up in, most of my childhood was New Haven.
01:07:26.680
We had better pizza in New Haven, I do want to know.
01:07:48.980
By the way, I'll take you to a place and I'll take you to a place and I'll take you to a
01:07:52.480
piece of Queens and Forest Hills, this little spot, best pizza you've ever had.
01:07:56.900
I've tried the pizza that is not compared to New Haven.
01:08:10.600
I think the past two years have been maybe specifically crazy.
01:08:17.620
Was it the Diddy trial happening right now or Luigi Mangione?
01:08:28.580
When Luigi came back to the city, I met him on a helicopter because he sent a very strong
01:08:36.660
You can't feed into the fear to assassinate someone in that magnitude.
01:08:40.860
That's why I was looking at the No King's Day flyer.
01:08:48.660
And we can't feed into this assassination culture.
01:08:53.440
You know, that's what fed into what happened in Minnesota.
01:08:56.560
The guy who assassinated the elected officials in Minnesota, he had no king.
01:09:06.060
And so one of the theories is that he was upset because those elected officials voted against
01:09:20.200
But one thing for sure, he had no king's flyers.
01:09:24.240
And so people don't realize that a lot of folks are being radicalized right now.
01:09:27.920
And when you look at these surveys of people saying assassination because you disagree with someone's policy is acceptable.
01:09:40.900
You know, as you were saying, people don't want to even have a conversation when they disagree.
01:09:46.400
They think that you have to be canceled or killed on one or the other.
0.85
01:09:57.760
I think a lot of people have never traveled the world.
01:10:01.100
Once you travel the world, you realize how great America is.
01:10:10.160
I can go get, I can get something two o'clock in the morning if I'm hungry.
01:10:14.840
Everyone that I've met in New York that's not from here, I tell them this one thing.
01:10:25.020
Whenever the buildings start coming in on you, whenever you start getting really down,
01:10:31.760
And then the minute you come back and you land in that city and you see those buildings.
01:10:43.580
You can even go to the south of France and want to come back.
01:10:46.180
The problem is people stay through that pressure, through that stress, through that thing,
01:10:59.700
The minute you start feeling like that, you leave, take a vacation, take a trip, go somewhere.
01:11:05.460
Because that minute when you come back, there's nothing like that.
01:11:09.420
I kind of feel like that when I go to Miami sometimes.
01:11:12.240
Like, I could go for a week and then I'm like, I kind of got to get back home.
01:11:16.360
Look at all the people during COVID that left, right?
01:11:39.620
They will come right back and we work on these taxes.
01:11:41.600
Well, the candidates that are running for mayor, they want to increase taxes over and over
01:11:55.140
Love it, love it, love it, love it, love it, love it.
01:11:57.440
Is that one of your objectives, to lower the very high taxes in New York City?
01:12:00.620
And, you know, no matter what we went through, from COVID to the migrant crisis, no matter
01:12:08.480
what we went through, we did not raise taxes and we did not lay off anyone.
01:12:14.300
And everyone wanted us to, you know, well, you got to raise taxes, you got to lay off
01:12:18.600
And I said, no, everyone, we want to make sure the city remains an attractive city.
01:12:23.360
And you're judged in this city by the professionals are bond raiders.
01:12:29.640
They determined how well you're managing the city to decide if they're going to increase
01:12:33.760
or decrease your bond and send a message that if we are a good investment, they raised my
01:12:39.160
And they leaned into it and stated that, you know, this guy is managing the city through
01:12:45.700
And because of that, we are a stable investment in the city.
01:12:49.780
And we're attracting a lot of businesses, a lot of jobs are coming here.
01:12:57.740
Sneaker, I would like for you to ask him a question on COVID because I feel like he's
01:13:06.420
And I want to break it down a little bit more because I'm not political, like I said, but
01:13:15.600
Like, my dad was over here, yeah, my dad was over here putting rubber bands on people's
01:13:20.980
ears with napkins, talking about this is a mask for y'all to have so y'all can be safe
01:13:30.360
So my question for you is how do you feel COVID affected New York City?
01:13:36.760
But I know Sneaker got another question to ask.
01:13:40.500
That's just to start off with it, you know what I'm saying?
01:13:44.700
A lot of children stayed home and they still never came back to school.
01:13:48.120
So we have a whole generation that was impacted emotionally through COVID, you know, chronic
01:13:54.540
A lot of people went into dark places when they didn't go to work and never returned.
01:14:00.260
And, you know, no matter how much Andrews talks about it, 15,000 people died in nursing homes.
01:14:09.940
People lost their grandparents, their parents, and that's real.
01:14:17.980
And so it was a real struggle, as Jordan was saying.
01:14:21.720
I slept in my office throughout that whole time so I could get up early and go to the hospitals
01:14:26.020
and really encourage my nurses, my doctors, and handing out masks and NYCHA developments
01:14:35.440
Generals don't send their troops into battle and say, how was the war?
01:14:43.800
You got to lead people into battle so they can believe in, you know, believe in themselves.
01:14:54.180
It was the hardest place to be in during COVID.
01:14:56.800
People would say, people were mind-blowing that I stayed.
01:15:03.080
Because when I was in L.A., we still had the canyons that were open.
01:15:06.700
Like, you could still kind of get fresh air outside.
01:15:17.880
There were morgues where you had bodies lined out outside.
01:15:45.300
Like, that's something that strikes me the wrong way.
01:15:50.820
And other people were able to make millions off of this whole disease that we're dealing with.
01:15:54.740
And that bothers me as a human being, as a New Yorker, as someone who's just around.
01:16:01.300
So, I'm sorry you over here dealing with that, man.
01:16:04.600
Like, that was a whole situation that you had to go through.
01:16:08.020
Like, when you hear COVID, you think your father's death.
01:16:14.120
So, like, for you to have to go through that during that time, everyone's like, oh, I survived COVID.
01:16:20.580
It's like, man, you don't even understand what COVID did to me.
01:16:29.200
And other people got $5 million off of COVID, which I'm bothered about.
01:17:05.320
We got an opportunity to get to know you as a person.
01:17:09.300
And I'm really proud of you for everything that you overcome.
01:17:22.100
It's one of the coolest interviews you've ever done.
01:17:24.660
Eric Adams, I wish all the success to you and your family.
01:17:27.480
Thanks for what you've done so far and the effort you put into the city.