Mayor Bill de Blasio is the first black mayor to be charged with corruption in the United States. He's accused of accepting upgrades from foreign governments, allowing the Turkish President to occupy his own building in Manhattan, and allowing a fire inspection to be performed on a building that was being illegally occupied by the Turkish government.
00:01:25.420You know, where were these, you know, the secret stash somewhere.
00:01:29.480And what many people did not read, they saw the presentation that was given.
00:01:35.000And it was, you walk away with saying, oh, my God, what did this guy do?
00:01:38.840But when you read it and you saw that I didn't open the consulate, I asked the FDNY, can you look into the inspection to get the inspection done?
00:01:52.800So just to be clear for people who haven't read the indictment, you are accused of being bribed by the Turkish government to allow the Turkish president or prime minister, pardon my not remembering.
00:02:08.580To get an inspection to determine if they could pass a fire inspection.
00:02:14.160And if they couldn't do it, you see in the indictment, I clearly stated, to manage the expectation if it couldn't be done.
00:02:21.280So you get a call from the Turkish government and they say, Turkish officials want to occupy their own consulate, which is being built in New York, hasn't received a fire inspection yet.
00:02:29.740You call FDNY and say, hey, can you do the, you know, the government wants to occupy their own building.
00:02:34.800Can you, I'm the mayor, is another country, they want to occupy their own building, can you go ahead and do the fire inspection?
00:02:40.840There's no evidence that the building was a fire trap or out of compliance with any fire regulation.
00:02:47.960So it's, that's a weird thing to be indicted for.
00:02:51.600No, no, no, and not only where to be indicted for, when you look at, you know, being a former law enforcement person, pushing public safety, living your life a certain way, it was painful.
00:03:08.120It was extremely painful to go through this, you know, millions of dollars in legal bills and just not being able to response.
00:03:18.820You know, the hardest part about this for me, anyone that's followed my career, they know I'm a straight fighter, you know, and this is the first time in my life that you have to sit here and be punched on and you have to allow your attorney to fight the fight.
00:03:34.980I know how to fight and I like to fight to defend myself and not being able to do that is hard as hell.
00:03:41.940Well, the weird thing is, from the Washington perspective, where I'm from, is that you're under indictment for allowing foreign governments, Turkey, not North Korea, by the way, or Iran, but like a member of NATO, allowing them to upgrade your flights.
00:03:57.900Pretty much every member of Congress takes, almost every single 535 House and Senate takes flights to other countries hosted by foreign governments and are given, in effect, tens of thousands of dollars of goods and services by those governments every single time.
00:04:11.520Upgrades, upgrades, police protection, motorcades, no one's ever been indicted for that.
00:04:25.160And I believe that I have a great attorney and I cannot tell you how, you know, there's a desire, again, of just want to push back on this, the narrative that has been put out there.
00:04:39.580Yeah, I mean, I think anyone who reads the indictment will come away confused.
00:04:42.940And that's kind of why I was so anxious to talk to you.
00:05:07.040And then you heard the president state that his Justice Department was politicized.
00:05:12.240You heard the incoming president stating that it's politicized.
00:05:15.600I think that there were those who were in that orbit that felt I was not a good Democrat because I watched my city, the city that I love, go through an onslaught of the migrant and immigration policy, a fail, a border policy.
00:05:35.740And after 10 trips to Washington stating that this is a problem, it was costing us a great deal of money, $6.5 billion that went out of our tax dollars.
00:05:47.620And I think that there were those who were just angry about it and thought I wasn't a good Democrat.
00:05:52.100Because you complained about allowing tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of illegals from foreign nationals who have no right to be here to come into your city and you have to pay for it.
00:08:38.600We took $6.5 billion out of paying for chronically absent students.
00:08:44.900We could have paid $200 million for it.
00:08:46.760We could have paid for housing, older adults.
00:08:49.080The long-term impact of what's happening to New York, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, Houston, the long-term impact has yet to materialize what this crisis has done to our cities.
00:09:03.420So what do you think the damage looks like long-term?
00:09:08.500We're facing, after COVID, we're dealing with a severe mental health issue just throughout the entire country.
00:09:16.120But specifically here in New York, we have a substantial number of chronically absent young people who were just traumatized from COVID and other things.
00:09:25.660And they just stopped coming to school.
00:09:28.100If I had $200 million that I can go out and go find those young people and place them back on the correct course, I'm preventing the long-term problem.
00:09:38.300If you don't educate, you're going to incarcerate.
00:09:40.440That's the common denominator in all of our prisons, the lack of education.
00:09:45.020I could have put hundreds of millions of dollars in what I'm doing around dyslexia screening and other learning disabilities.
00:09:52.720So those $6.5 million that I didn't put into housing, I did not put into senior care, we're getting ready to excuse medical debt for New Yorkers that are dealing with severe medical debt.
00:10:03.300All of these dollars could have gone into dealing with the long-term fixes that we were projecting to correct.
00:10:09.920And did you tell the White House that?
00:10:12.000Over and over again, over and over again, the impact of what these dollars-
00:10:18.200It appears to me that there was a bigger focus on the national election and not what it was doing to the cities.
00:10:27.860And we started to build a coalition of other mayors because when I was standing alone talking about this, it appears as though that, well, Eric, why are you complaining?
00:11:16.060We were getting almost 8,000 migrants and asylum seekers a week, 16,000 every two weeks.
00:11:22.380And we were being compelled by the Legal Aid Society to find them housing within a short period of time until we had to go back to court and fight that this humanitarian crisis is not what is normally someone has the right to have shelter within the city.
00:11:40.120And they were coming in 1, 2, 3 a.m. in the morning.
00:11:45.680I'm just confused by why that's the responsibility of the taxpayers, the citizenry of New York, and your responsibility.
00:11:51.140Someone comes into our country illegally from another nation, not invited, here in violation of our laws, and it's your responsibility to make sure that they're dealt with?
00:13:42.820I couldn't even allow them to volunteer and give them a stipend for picking up garbage and removing graffiti and doing some of the services.
00:13:49.840They said, no, you can't do that either.
00:13:51.620So they had to sit there idle and then.
00:15:42.820But did you, between your indictment and the end of Biden's term, talk to anyone at the White House and say, hey, you indicted me for complaining?
00:16:19.780Remember, what inspired me to run for office was watching an 11-year-old boy arrested several times for robbery and just to learn that he was not in school for months and no one was checking up on him.
00:16:30.440His dad was in jail for a serious crime.
00:16:42.380I was seeing that again when we were not able to provide services for the people of this city.
00:16:47.960Millions of Americans are still clinging to their New Year's resolutions, but some goals transcend the flipping of the calendar.
00:16:53.960Being prepared should always be a goal.
00:16:56.920When a crisis hits, the last thing you want is to be scrambling for something basic like medication.
00:17:03.080And that's why the Jace case changes the game.
00:17:05.980The Jace case is your personal emergency supply of life-saving medications, antibiotics, critical prescriptions, things you're actually going to need when pharmacies are not available.
00:17:15.900The Jace case's protection is totally necessary.
00:17:19.200So as you're planning for the rest of this year, make emergency preparedness a top priority.
00:18:29.600As we welcome in a new year, it's time to focus on what matters most.
00:18:35.300Creating healthier habits, enjoying more moments with family, and spending less money on going out to eat.
00:18:41.280GoodRanchers.com is here to help you turn those resolutions into solutions.
00:18:45.880During Good Ranchers New Year New Meat Special, you can subscribe to any box of their 100% American Meat and Wild Caught Seafood.
00:18:52.900And if you use code TUCKER at checkout, you'll get $25 off and your choice of free ground beef, chicken, or salmon in every order for an entire year.
00:19:02.940By shopping with Good Ranchers, you're supporting local farms across the U.S. and avoiding the chaos of grocery store imports.
00:19:10.420Most importantly, you'll enjoy stress-free, delicious meals that let you focus on what matters.
00:19:45.660Is that because you don't have any knees? Or...
00:19:48.040There's a way in which this is, like, incredibly unfair to New Yorkers.
00:20:08.340So you're from Brooklyn. There are a lot of American-born Brooklyn people, a lot of Caribbean people, you know, hardworking, not making much money.
00:20:26.860What... I mean, what's their perspective on this?
00:20:29.740And it's so funny you said that. I was at a meeting the other day with a group of Jamaican immigrants. I was at a... They were having a reception. And it was at the same time that the correction officers killed a young man in upstate one of our jails, one of our prisons.
00:20:49.020The correction union came out immediately and said, they're not one of us. Those correction officers don't represent us. And I said that to the Jamaican immigrants who were in the room. And I shared with them, you come here to pursue the American dream. Many of you stay with your family members. You leave loved ones at home. You fight hard. You're willing to do whatever job that's possible.
00:21:12.100So I need you to stand up and say, those who are committing crimes, those who are part of gangs and being violent, they're not one of you. You know, you know, this is a country of immigrants. That's who we are. Build our bridges, our roadways from early Irish or early Italians and so on and so forth.
00:21:31.800So the issue is, how do you properly allow people in the country with a secure border and know what their destiny is when they get here?
00:21:41.300That is what we don't have right now. This is a free fall and it's the wrong thing to do.
00:21:46.500I got to admit, I'll just admit it. I thought it was pretty funny when they started trucking illegals here because I don't live in New York, so I have to deal with the consequences because it is such a liberal city, but mostly because it's a sanctuary city.
00:21:58.560Which is basically committed an act of insurrection against the federal government by ignoring federal law, kind of what the Confederates did at Fort Sumter, except even more outrageous.
00:22:06.680And so isn't there a sense in which New York kind of deserves this? It was a sanctuary city.
00:22:12.560And many people don't really get the sanctuary city part.
00:22:32.700He buys gas, he's paying taxes. Sanctuary city says that as long as you're here, you have a right to get the services your tax dollars are paying for.
00:22:41.900Your children are being educated. If you need police services, you can get it. If you need medical care, you can get it.
00:22:47.700That's what sanctuary city says, and that you should not be afraid of getting those services because your tax dollars are paying for them.
00:22:55.520But I mean, you could say that of anybody breaking federal law.
00:22:58.260I mean, there could be someone indicted on terror charges or a murderer on the lam.
00:23:03.800And if New York harbors him, it's harboring a criminal. It's violating federal law. And that is a form of insurrection, right?
00:23:10.280You're saying we're not following the laws of the United States of America.
00:23:14.340So, like, why shouldn't Washington send troops here, like, immediately and make you obey, as Eisenhower did to Central High School in Little Rock in the 50s when they ignored Brown versus Board?
00:23:24.220You can't be out of compliance with federal law without getting the 101st Airborne, don't you think?
00:23:28.900Well, my conversation with Tom, who's coming in as our border czars, one place here and I totally agree on, those who violate their rights to come here by committing crimes, they need to leave our country after they serve their time.
00:23:48.060And that immigrant family who's trying to get a pathway into becoming a citizen, living out this amazing American dream, I don't think they should be rounded up in the middle of the night and say, we're going to move you out.
00:24:01.180Well, then why isn't it fair for the states that are, you know, still part of the United States and are obeying federal law to send all of their illegals here?
00:24:10.140Because you guys welcome them. I mean, and you can pay for it.
00:24:12.820No, we're not welcoming them. We've been very clear. We're not welcoming everyone.
00:24:16.560Everyone, no, everyone's sin. We say when they're here and they're following the rules and they're paying their taxes, they're doing the things that people are supposed to do.
00:24:27.660My focus are those who are harming innocent citizens.
00:24:31.500But you said it was a minute ago. I mean, I get what you're saying.
00:24:34.300And I think it sounds good, but I think we just discovered why it's not good, because it's the volume.
00:24:41.680Like, I think probably 99 percent of the immigrants who are wrecking your city are great people who have good, you know, they're not bad people, but they're just too many of them and you can't afford it.
00:25:46.880They're not doing it for free, you know.
00:25:48.680And if you want to come, if we control the border and make sure prior to people coming in that you know where you're going and what you're doing and not this free fall that we're seeing right now.
00:26:30.520So rather than just say, well, we're just going to import people from Honduras or Paraguay or whatever, why don't we say, let's get our people working instead?
00:26:39.660That's exactly. Here in New York, we've cut unemployment in those communities that you're talking about by over 20% because you're right.
00:26:49.440We need to make sure while we're filling those jobs, we need to make sure that we're looking after those who are in this country for whatever reason have barriers to employment.
00:26:59.520We have been removing those barriers to unemployment, and it's still not filling the demand that we have in need of workers, not only here in New York.
00:27:09.580You go across the country in those cities where you have a population problem, we need workers.
00:27:14.880Well, because the more immigration you have, the smaller the percentage of Americans who work.
00:27:19.300I mean, that's true in every country with mass immigration.
00:27:22.340The native population stops working when you flood the country with foreigners.
00:27:26.320And I don't know why that's not obvious to everybody, but it is true, and it's particularly true for African-Americans.
00:27:33.220And I just think it's weird that nobody seems to notice or care.
00:27:40.680I care about when I sit down with my business leaders, and my business leaders are saying, Eric, I have to close down a restaurant because I can't get workers.
00:27:49.380Right. You know, so I believe that there's a solution and answer that starts with securing our borders, real immigration reform, removing those who are committing serious violent actions in our country, and continue the pursuit of the American dream.
00:28:05.900So what I see the conflict, like big picture, I know you feel this every day, I don't know if you'll admit it, is the conflict between the people who pay for everything in politics, not just on the Democratic side, by the way, also Republican side.
00:28:17.060But they're all rich white liberals, just to be honest.
00:28:52.200When I walked in the room and I explained to them that if we don't fix our school system, the first thing someone will do when they go to buy property, they ask two questions.
00:29:06.400I ran on better schools, safe communities.
00:29:10.240And so, yes, maybe that affluent real estate owner is not sending his child to public school, but no one wants to bring their company here if you have bad schools and unsafe communities.
00:29:23.460And so there is this symbiotic relationship, even as they're not directly connected to it.
00:29:28.640They need safe streets, good schools in order to bring in those employees, those workers, those renters, those buyers.
00:29:52.740And they're bringing their finance money down there, which is the single largest private sector employer in your city, of course, is banking.
00:30:02.280And so, like, how do you pay for a city of 8 million people if an increasing percentage of the population is poor, if the rich people are leaving, which they are?
00:33:16.740Or someone shoved you to the subway track.
00:33:18.920But when you do a correlation of what's causing that fear, that anxiety, it's those with severe mental health issues.
00:33:27.480We have been fighting with our state lawmakers as well as those advocates, again, that are trying to stop us from taking those with severe mental health illness off our streets.
00:33:38.600And we have been successful in doing that.
00:33:40.5608,000 people with mental health illness, we were able to remove off our subway system and put them into what we call a safe haven.
00:33:49.440So the real battle is dealing with the anxiety that people are feeling.
00:33:55.460More jobs in the city history, second largest tourism in city history.
00:33:59.360Our subway system is safe back to the 2009 days of 20,000 illegal guns removed off our streets.
00:34:05.760Our cops have stepped up, no matter how bad they've been treated by some, they've stepped up and they've produced for the people of the city of New York.
00:34:13.160But the prosecutors don't, I mean, I keep reading, you know, some guy gets picked up, he's been arrested 47 times for violent crimes, not prosecuted.
00:34:43.020People who were arrested three times in a year for the same crimes, the numbers are unbelievable.
00:34:49.780For robberies, for assault, for burglaries, for grand larceny.
00:34:54.360These guys are being, it's a revolving door system.
00:34:57.840And it's not only here, if you go across the country, you will see it's the same stats, the same small number of people are repeatedly committing crimes.
00:35:19.480You've got some of the worst prosecutors in the country.
00:35:21.520George Soros paid for them, as you know.
00:35:23.280And why not just call them out and say people died because of that prosecutor?
00:35:27.600What we do is sit down and really try to show our lawmakers, our prosecutors, where the numbers are, where the results are, and how we can turn this around.
00:35:37.160And one of the bills is what's called the Discovery Bill, which has caused a great deal of refusal or failures to prosecute.
00:35:46.060We sat down with our district attorneys.
00:35:47.860They seem now to be aligned with us as we go back and sort of alter some of these changes that we've made that's impacted on public safety.
00:35:58.080Idealism, I say, collides with realism.
00:36:01.000The laws we make must ensure that we don't make our city unsafe.
00:36:06.100Yeah, and why do you let people smoke weed on the street here?
00:41:59.000Well, you know, what happens is that if you push back on that that's the norm and that's what working class people want, you get demonized.
00:42:59.380And the team, we were very clear, we have to run our race.
00:43:02.880And so no matter who's in the race, I'm going to run my race and I'm going to sell to New Yorkers what we did with this city in the reversal of where we were where we were headed and where we're going now.
00:43:13.660So you were here in the 90s when the city reached peak crime.
00:43:44.780And I policed during that era and Bill Bratton, who I have a great deal of respect for.
00:43:49.680And Jack Maple, as you mentioned, many people don't know that name, Jack Maple.
00:43:53.060But we owe a debt of gratitude to his commitment.
00:43:56.080And that whole model of just not accepting any and everything goals, I know how successful it is.
00:44:02.960And that is a methodology that I believe and I live by.
00:44:06.220Because I police when you allow any and everything goals.
00:44:09.140I was in the subway systems and I saw what our subway systems look like.
00:44:13.260And so you have to go to the method, as Bill would say, you have to reclaim the city so that you can make sure it's doing the right thing for New Yorkers.
00:44:22.960What are you expecting with this indictment?
00:44:29.300Do you think, I mean, is there going to be a trial?
00:46:17.820And, you know, we need to be clear with even an incoming president is talking about with the new visas of getting some of the intellectual talent into this country.
00:46:29.720I think there's some great opportunities and we need to find out those areas of agreement.
00:46:34.320But you're not going to let those people drive into the city without paying a big tax.
00:46:38.940Why don't I let people drive in your city?
00:46:41.880Okay, here's my take on congestion pricing.
00:46:44.320This is the bicycle lobby from the west side who doesn't believe in cars in the first place, exerting undue influence once again on the mayor's office and shafting the people in Westchester, the outer boroughs, just want to drive their minivans into the city to do a day's labor.
00:47:00.440You know, and I always tease people when I'm at the town hall of a guy came up to me one day and said, you know what, I'm getting a divorce.
00:47:38.180And if it was up to me, we would have more waivers if we had to do it because we have to think about our firefighters, our police officers, our teachers.
00:47:58.240Places like the Bronx because people would be parking their cars there.
00:48:01.460They would be trying to reroute themselves.
00:48:03.660And some communities have a historical problem with environmental issues because of the Cross-Bronce Expressway and other issues, you know, that they had to deal with.
00:48:12.800Now you're getting into deep New York stuff.
00:48:46.800But if you're going to, basically, this MTA rule will force people onto public transportation buses and particularly the subway system, biggest in the country.
00:48:54.900Isn't it fair that the subway be, like, perfect?
00:49:51.860Well, you know, we made a mistake years ago when, because of the way our psychiatric wards, the draconian practices of those psychiatric wards,
00:50:02.820advocates came in and stated that it's wrong for people to be kept in these locations.
00:50:10.320When we shut them down, we put them in the street.
00:50:13.740No one thought through, well, what do we do?
00:50:15.820Because, listen, we have to be honest with ourselves.
00:50:17.820They are those who cannot take care of themselves.
00:50:25.92020% have severe mental health issues, yet we're closing the jail, open four new jails, just to create four more smaller Rikers.
00:50:34.520I say let's turn one of them into a state-of-the-art mental health facility for outpatient, inpatient treatment.
00:50:42.120This way we can deal with the population the way we should be.
00:50:45.460But does it, there does, I'm not an expert, but there does seem to be an absolute rise in severe mental illness, not just anxiety disorders, but disassociative, you know, schizophrenia, stuff like that.
00:50:57.340And I don't know, I don't, I don't, you know, Tucker, I don't know if it was from COVID, you know, people were traumatized through COVID.
00:51:03.540You know, I lost a lot of good friends through COVID.
00:51:06.560And, you know, some people lost loved ones and family members who took care of them when they were going through severe problems.
00:51:23.740When I go across the country, I'm seeing the same problem, and there's no real attempt to address it as much as I believe we should be.
00:51:31.660What about all the people who were hesitant to take the vax, who didn't know enough or who were aware of, you know, previous incidents of the government lying about public health?
00:51:55.060The mayor had a rule in place already on what happened with those who did not take the vaccine.
00:52:03.340Those conversations are still being played out in court to determine what should happen with them.
00:52:08.760But we had to make sure we were dealing with a severe public health emergency, and we had to make sure that we addressed it as soon as possible to make sure we could get it under control.
00:52:19.200Those were some real troubling, scary times when we were dealing with COVID.
00:52:23.500But when you have a scary time, what you can't do is isolate a vulnerable minority and blame them for everything, which is what they did.
00:52:46.100American citizens with jobs and families, they did this.
00:52:49.420Maybe we should call that what it is, which is bad.
00:52:52.200Yeah, and I think that, you know, your love of history, that I think that sometimes when you're dealing with emergency, how we respond, we look back later and say, hey, could we have done things differently?