Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump thanked Eric Adams on Sunday at his rally at Madison Square Garden, adding that the New York City mayor has been “treated very badly” by the Department of Justice.
“I wanna thank Mayor Adams,” Trump said to a smattering of boos toward the end of his rally, carried live by Newsmax and simulcast on the Newsmax2 online streaming platform.
Adams was indicted by the DOJ late last month on bribery charges, something with which Trump said he could empathize. Trump said it was predictable once Adams criticized the Biden administration for the lack of help in dealing with the illegal immigration problem in the city during the summer of 2023.
“Mayor Adams has been treated pretty badly. When he said this whole thing with the migrants coming into New York, ‘This is just not sustainable. We can’t do it. We’re trying to run the city, we got 100,000 migrants coming. We can’t do it.’ … He said it very nicely,” Trump told the sold-out crowd. “I said, ‘He’s going to be indicted by these lunatics.’ A year later, he got indicted.”
Adams this week pushed back against rhetoric aimed at Trump, including the labeling of the former president as a “fascist,” as the mayor was criticized for allowing the Republican nominee to hold his rally at Madison Square Garden.
“He’s been really great. He said, ‘They shouldn’t be calling Trump a dictator because it’s not true.’ That was nice, very nice. He’s going through a hard time with these people,” Trump said.
