New York City mayor Eric Adams (D.) said Sunday that "every day" the city could experience an attack on par with the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
"New York: This is a place where, every day you wake up, you could experience everything from a plane crashing into our Trade Center to a person who's celebrating a new business that's open," said Adams when PIX11's Dan Mannarino asked him to describe his experience in 2023 in one word. "This is a very, very complicated city, and that's why its the greatest city on the globe."
Adams also discussed 2023's highs, which, he said, included an increase in private-sector jobs and a reduction in crime, as well as its lows, including an FBI probe into his 2021 mayoral campaign and the city's migrant crisis.
The bureau is investigating whether Adams's campaign conspired with the Turkish government and a construction company, which Turkish nationals owned, to receive illicit funds, though neither he nor his campaign have been accused of wrongdoing.
Adams in the Sunday interview dismissed a question on whether he would step aside in the case of an indictment.
"I think it's ridiculous for somebody to say, 'if there's an indictment.' People are throwing these words out there. Let the process carry out. That is what's great about our country: There is a due process system in place. I am going to serve as the mayor of this city and navigate us through this," Adams said.
Adams also said the migrant crisis was more than a "curveball," as Mannarino described it.
"Oh, Curveball? That's not even a curveball," said Adams. "That's a brushback pitch that knocked us to the ground, but we gotta get back up and knock it out of the park." He anticipated that the federal government will not give the city aid in 2024 to deal with the crisis and that the process of cutting the city's budget to deal with the crisis would be "extremely painful."
"Everything's on the table," Adams said when asked what cuts may look like, "but we want to minimize the impact to low-income New Yorkers, our educational institutions, our public safety."
The mayor has spoken out frequently about the crisis's impact on the city. In September, he said the issue would "destroy New York City," adding that he does not "see an ending to this."