Opinion: Like Foreign Governments, The Media Helps Prop Up NYC Mayor Eric Adams

After New York City Mayor Eric Adams was indicted on four federal counts of bribery, wire fraud, and solicitation of foreign donations last week, he predictably rushed to a Black church to employ it as some sort of sanctified spin room.

“I’m not going to resign, I’m going to reign,” Adams declared in a self-serving testimonial to Black churchgoers during a stop at Emmanuel Presbyterian Reformed Church.

Mayors are public servants, i.e., not designed to be the “reigning” kind, but Adams has long thought of himself and his position in lofty and pre-ordained terms.

In 2022, he told Radio Vision Cristiania, “I am mayor because God gave me the authority to be mayor, and he placed in the hearts of the voters to give me that authority.”

That authority, according to prosecutors working for the Southern District of New York, has been used in alleged criminal activity, and as a result, has led to Adams becoming the first NYC mayor to ever be indicted.

This is shocking but not at all surprising to anyone vaguely familiar with Adams’ political career.

As one of his former political rivals in the NYC mayoral race, Andrew Yang told Adams during a debate in 2021: “We all know you’ve been investigated for corruption everywhere you’ve gone. You’ve achieved the rare trifecta of corruption investigations.”

And yet, Adams managed to win a closely contested Democratic party mayoral primary that determined the de facto next mayor of New York City, and on that night of victory claimed: “Look at me and you’re seeing the future of the Democratic Party.”

A lot of folks paid to know better swiftly fell into this farcical proclamation.

Following his win, Adams was promptly invited to the White House for a meeting with President Joe Biden about strategies to combat gun violence.

Meanwhile, New York Times columnist Bret Stephens was busy prophesying that Adams would “save New York.”

Two days after Adams was sworn in as mayor, Nate Silver tweeted: “It’s probably foolish to think a NYC mayor will successfully translate into being a national political figure, but I still think Eric Adams would be in my top 5 for ‘who will be the next Democratic presidential nominee after Joe Biden?’”

The Wall Street Journal joined the silly rich and disconnected pundit chorus with headlines touting Adams and Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia as future party leaders.

Later that year, then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Congressman Sean Patrick Maloney, head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, asked Adams to speak to Democratic members, presenting him as some kind of communications expert.

Adams would also go on to become a fixture on morning cable news ― notably on MSNBC’s ”Morning Joe.”

Adams may want to give God all the glory for his political ascension, but the favor Adams has often spoken of in his rise has more to do with more worldly influences like money and favorable media attention from the most influential platforms.

Now we are learning just how far some media outlets went to help Adams not only get elected but remain in power amid legal scandals.

The day after Adams’ pew-delivered promise to continue to reign, new reporting from Noah Shachtman at New York’s Intelligencer reveals how much the New York Post has invested in Adams.

Shachtman describes a “secret alliance” between the two factions and writes, “In a way, Rupert Murdoch’s tabloid made Eric Adams mayor,” by way of pilling on negative coverage on all of Adams’ mayoral rivals while allowing him to defend himself against accusations made by other publications.

Say, when Politico reported that Adams was a resident of New Jersey while running for NYC mayor, one campaign member explained to Shachtman, “It would have irrevocably fucked him if they had covered it fairly.”

According to Shachtman’s reporting, “The coverage was so slanted that the City Hall bureau chief left in part over disagreements with management over the fawning coverage of Adams.”

It can’t be overstated how much-alleged straw donations from a foreign government used to gain eight figures in matching public funds undoubtedly played a role in Adams’ win in that hotly contested NYC mayoral race.

Similarly, ridiculous headlines and conservative political tones aside, the New York Post remains an important paper in the city, so it also can’t be overlooked how much the paper’s endorsement and slanted coverage influenced the results of an election determined by less than 7,000 votes.

Adams, an ex-cop, voraciously used a “law and order” narrative to argue that he would restore public safety amid fears of rising crime rates during the pandemic — fears repeatedly stoked by publications and cable news networks at the time.

Then, after pulling off the ruse, let him fancy himself as a future star of the Democratic party while having all that baggage and controversial political circle. Adams forgot that even if he was “blue,” he remained a Black political figure, and based on his indictment ― which is almost comical in how corrupt it reads ― while I can’t predict the future as I am no prophet, I nonetheless confidently believe that unless God intervenes directly, Adams is unlikely to be mayor of New York for a second term.

I am not convinced he’ll be able to finish his first term given his legal troubles only stand to grow with ongoing investigations into him and his administration.

What I can say, though, is that Eric Adams was never a mystery. He may have sold a dream of a Black mayor cop with “swagger” but there had been readily available information to counter such claims. But the most powerful people in the media wanted to prop their Black cop political action figure up anyway.

A lot of the fraud around Eric Adams warrants airing out, but to get a whole sense of how this all can be, don’t only look in the direction of the foreign governments that helped him.

We have plenty of people in the wrong stateside, too.