A fired-up Mayor Eric Adams reemerged from seclusion Thursday, coming out swinging with a campaign-style speech ripping the political rumor mill that he was days from stepping down.
Adams, however, didn’t offer any details on the mystery illness that kept him uncharacteristically out of public view most of this week – and prompted a torrent of chatter about his health and the corruption case casting a shadow over his administration.
“Last week was scary, it was hard, I’m not going to lie to you,” is all he told the crowd at his annual interfaith breakfast held in New York Public Library.
The speech instead focused on settling real and imagined scores, and appeared to herald Adams’ shift into campaign mode as a likely bruising Democratic primary looms in June.
The pro-Adams crowd repeatedly drowned out the mayor with roaring applause and cheers as he railed that the media wouldn’t cover his administration’s accomplishments on fighting crime, foster care and more.
“Let me tell you why people are angry, because one of you is in charge of this city,” he said. “I’m an ordinary, dyslexic, hard-working, blue-collar mayor and those who have been in power for years who have denied you have to deal with the fact that we are now in charge.”
Adams’ pugilistic stance was in stark contrast to his notable public absence through an eventful week punctuated by dramatic federal immigration raids in New York City.
City Hall officials repeatedly said Adams was on doctors’ orders to not maintain his public schedule, but he was spotted by The Post ducking out of Gracie Mansion late Monday on an hours-long trip. He also met with union leaders whose support could be pivotal in his re-election fight.
Tongues started wagging in the vacuum left by Adams, as his absence unfolded during the primary season and while he faced a whopping $735,000 legal defense debt, strong hints by federal prosecutors that he could face additional charges and a seeming unwillingness to criticize the potential pardon-granting Trump.
Rumors swirled in political circles that Adams would resign — and were picked up by outlets such as the New York Daily News after Adams’ defense attorney Alex Spiro flatly denied them.
Those rumors irked Adams.
“Who started the stupid rumor that I was stepping down on Friday?” he said during the speech. “Are you out of your mind?”
Adams and his team afterward griped that the Big Apple media, including The Post, didn’t report on his administration hitting an all-time record for most jobs – a milestone that City Hall consigned to the bare effort minimum of a press release sent out as his team offered no explanation as to what ailment befell the mayor of the largest US city.
“The fact that The Post would rather camp outside the Mayor’s house to see if he’s going to doctor’s appointments than cover New Yorkers’ jobs is exactly the Mayor’s point,” said spokeswoman Kayla Mamelak.
The job numbers didn’t come with the typical fanfare for a milestone that is usually rolled out with a press conference.
Hours after The Post reported Wednesday that Adams was cleared by doctors to return to the limelight, reports trickled in that his defense team was trying to broker a deal with the new Trump administration to make any potential prison time in his corruption case go away.
The clandestine talks between Adams’ team and the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York have gone through the office of Trump’s new deputy attorney general, Emil Bove, a source confirmed to The Post late Wednesday.
The source did not elaborate on what was discussed, but Adams had previously met with Trump on Jan. 17 at the 45th and 47th president’s West Palm Beach golf course in a trip widely speculated to revolve around the mayor’s legal woes.
Adams has denied his historic corruption case came up during his talk with Trump.
Before taking office, Trump said he would consider pardoning the mayor, contending the mayor has been “treated pretty unfairly.”
The talks between Adams’ team and the Trump administration have focused on dropping the charges against the mayor to save the new president from having to use those pardoning powers, the New York Times reported.
