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OpEd: Mayor Eric Adams is right to seek work with President Trump

Fensterman
Howard Fensterman

It is the nature of political leadership that everything you do, or do not do, is subject to criticism and analysis that more often reflects the critics’ biases than the target.  

So it is with Mayor Eric Adams, who is receiving a torrent of criticism, mainly from the left side of the political spectrum, for reaching out to President Trump and his aides as the Democratic mayor faces a Republican administration that can help or hurt his city.  

Well, as the late Newsday columnist Murray Kempton once said, “A critic is someone who enters the  battlefield after the war is over and shoots the wounded.”  

The mayor is right, and doing his job, by committing to work with the President and his administration on issues where the federal government plays a large role.  

That includes immigration, where Adams has been forthrightly critical of former President Biden’s abdication at the border allowing millions of migrants to enter the country, many of them unchecked.  More than 200,000 wound up in New York City and the surrounding metropolitan area with city and state taxpayers forced to foot the bill for what is clearly a federal responsibility.  

And there are transportation issues, ranging from the proposed Gateway tunnel under the Hudson River  to the status of congestion pricing, where federal responsibility and city needs are closely joined. 

Those were among the main topics of a dinner I organized at Manhasset’s Cipollini restaurant that brought Adams together with Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, a close friend of mine who worked in the law firm I manage for seven years.  

They talked about the range of issues affecting both sides of the line between the city and Nassau,  including the proliferation of gangs that afflict so much pain and terror on residents of both jurisdictions.  

There was even criticism for Adams attending Trump’s inauguration at the Capitol on January 20th, which  coincided this year with Martin Luther King Jr. Day. 

“On MLK Day, like Reverend Dr. King said, we must put partisan politics aside to do what’s best for our country,” the mayor posted to social media as he waited for the inauguration to start. “I believe there’s  much we can achieve working alongside the federal government as we support our city’s values and  fight for New Yorkers.” 

As Lyndon Johnson once said, “I’m the only president you’ve got.” Right now, that’s President Trump. Mayor Adams is doing his job by seeking to work as cooperatively as he can with the new administration.