Adams Case Is Blueprint For Courting a President

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This morning’s front page is all about New York Mayor Eric Adams, and how he “cozied up” to Donald Trump in the wake of his election victory. Mr. Adams had been criminally indicted and faced political isolation, but Trump’s victory was a “golden opportunity,” according to the story reported by five people:

In the weeks before the inauguration, “Mr. Adams cozied up to Mr. Trump, his political allies and his family,” reads the second paragraph. If they’re saying “cozied up” in the New York Times, you can guarantee that the behavior we’re going to be reading about was pretty egregious. “Cosies” (with an English ‘s’ not a Yankee ‘z’) are reserved, in my lexicon, for things we use to keep our teapots warm. Although I did just go down a 10-minute Google-hole looking for “political tea cosy” on Etsy. There were some lame attempts (I was really hoping for a Rage Against the Machine tea cosy), but I fell in love with this one. The “knitting pattern” is only $5, but I’d need to know someone who can knit, and that’s not going to happen:

Unlike the wise owl pictured, it seems Mr. Adams has been rather…unwise. He called Trump several times to congratulate him on his election victory and met Stephen K. Bannon at a luxury Manhattan hotel, the story reports. I can only imagine the tone and tenor of that meeting, can you?

The Times piece this morning is based on interviews with more than a dozen people who spoke on condition of anonymity. No wonder it took so many reporters to go into it. That’s an awful lot of background chats!

The effort, they report, culminated in Mr. Adams “receiving an in-person meeting with Mr. Trump in Florida just days before the inauguration.” He didn’t ask for a pardon, then. But he did eventually get one. Indeed, it’s remarkable how cause-and-effectual the meeting and the timing of the pardon were. It’s almost as though both men knew not to discuss a corrupt thing they were planning to do, because they realized that to do so could land them up in further corruption trouble. It is as though they were both experienced at, say, a transactional approach to such things!

Here’s Donald Trump in court last year on hush money charges, incidentally, for which he was found guilty on 34 felony counts:

These two men had an affinity. Like recognizes like. You know?

As a reminder, Adams’s staff were, in many cases, aware of the extent to which Adams was up-to-his-neck in corrupt dealings with the Turkish government before his indictment. For example, here’s a staffer asking a Turkish airline manager to “charge a real price” for a preferential rate on a last-minute flight to Istanbul for one of his staff:

Corruption at the mayoral level is always rather boring compared to the things you might have seen in films. It often comes down to rather mundane favors. Nobody is going to give you a billion dollars. They might give you $15,000 and a fancy hotel stay. But that is, in part, what demonstrates the small imagination of corrupt people. None of these guys are thinking about helping society. They’re thinking about helping themselves. Corruption breeds corrupt characters. It’s why you might suspect somebody of corruption based on, say, a minor infraction. If they’re prepared to, say, shoplift, or cheat at golf, then their sense of impunity has been developed in other areas. See the movie, “Goldfinger”, 1964.

I worked as a reporter in New Orleans when former Mayor Ray Nagin was under investigation for corruption in the wake of Hurricane Katrina — which subsequently earned him 10 years in prison. He took reasonably small kickbacks on government contracts compared to others involved in the corruption after the storm.

If not granite countertops, there’s often luxury travel involved. In Adams’ case, he stayed for $600 a night at the “Bentley Suite” in Istanbul, which normally costs $7,000 a night. It’s vulgar. I don’t feel bad saying that. It’s just… trash.

Adams’ remaining staff — the ones who haven’t fled the sinking ship or switched sides to endorse and work for his upcoming rival, Andrew Cuomo — has characterized his meetings with Trump as efforts to “work with the new president,” just like everyone else. Yet, less than a month after their first meeting in Florida, “Mr. Trump’s Justice Department ordered federal prosecutors in Manhattan to seek a dismissal of the indictment, arguing that it hindered Mr. Adams’s cooperation with the administration’s immigration crackdown.”

Both sides stood to gain from this arrangement, the story reports. On the one hand, Mr. Adams could stay out of jail and prison. On the other, Mr. Trump could have someone support his immigration crackdown, “and, potentially, his family business,” the story says.

An ice rink contract. I told you corruption was mundane. This is about ego for Trump, not about serving society or doing anything particularly impressive.

One of the main challenges of all this corruption playing out in public is that it doesn’t actually look very good for either man. Adams’s spokesman insists that he has never discussed his case with Mr. Trump, or the ice rink contract with the parks department. Mr. Trump, meanwhile, has “played down the significance of the charges.”

And “for the present, any political gain from the case disappearing might be fleeting. The appearance of a backroom deal playing out in public has damaged the mayor’s re-election prospects, potentially limiting his usefulness.”

It’s bad for New York. It’s bad for New Yorkers. It keeps Eric Adams out of prison. It gets Mr. Trump a shot at running an ice rink contract in Central Park. But that’s it. The scale and scope of this corruption is so small-minded and unimaginative. It’s childish. It’s demeaning.

Former mayor Bill de Blasio had sought to oust the Trump Organization from the city’s Ferry Point golf course, operated on city land in the Bronx. But in 2022, Mr. Adams allowed Mr. Trump to keep Ferry Point, and approved the Trumps to “host a Saudi Arabia-backed women’s golf tournament there.”

Ah, the Saudi Arabians again! Incidentally, if you’d like to read more about the maid who worked in Saudi Arabia, check out the story, “Why Maids Keep Dying in Saudi Arabia,” but I should warn you. It is utterly outrageous and horrendous on a level that has angered me so deeply, I’m having trouble maintaining my usual sense of ironic detachment.

None of it is inconsistent with the sort of transactional view of justice evident in the story about Eric Adams and his relationship with Donald Trump.

Here’s Trump opening the Wollman ice rink in 1986:

De Blasio kicked Trump off the ice rink after the January 6 riots in 2021, and a new operator took over, but the contract expires in 2027. Trump has bid on the contract again, and the parks agency is “currently reviewing all proposals consistent with its procedures and the terms of the solicitation.”

What do you think are the chances that the ice rink might revert to Trump and his pals, over the coming years? The bad news, of course, is that since climate change, which is made up, appears to be advancing, the ice rink might have a much higher chance of melting by then.

Thanks for reading and sharing. I appreciate you.

Matt Davis lives in New York with his wife and child.