Trump and Adams Might Soon Go Official

Michael Nigro/AP

The grand arc of Eric Adams’ political evolution, which kicked off in 2021 with a bombastic claim that the former NYPD officer was the “future of the Democratic Party,” only for him to find salvation^[2] in Donald Trump’s return^[3] to office, appears to be reaching its logical endpoint: a prominent gig with the Trump administration.

The New York Times reports^[4] that advisers to the president, who has been drumming up ways to meddle in the politics of a hometown that hates him, are weighing potential positions for Adams in the Trump administration. (The other guy, in the red beret^[5]? He’s also reportedly being considered for a job.) The president’s advisers believe that the move could put an end to the game of chicken between Adams and Andrew Cuomo, helping the latter out of a virtually nonviable path to defeat Zohran Mamdani, the mayoral race’s overwhelming frontrunner.

If true, the plan would be the logical next step in Trump and Adams’ increasing alliance: a scandal-plagued mayor, in the most official capacity, answering to the guy whose Justice Department dropped criminal charges against him. Yet, it’s difficult to see how a wide-open contest between Cuomo and Mamdani, the 33-year-old frontrunner and democratic socialist, would work the way Trump apparently thinks: that defeating the Republican Party’s biggest bogeyman would be good for him politically. Even Cuomo seems skeptical^[6]. He told the Times that Mamdani’s victory “would be a political gift to the Republican Party, which would then use him to characterize the Democrats across the country going into the midterms.”

Of course, Trump’s decision-making is rarely governed by logic. Here, the president appears to relish the opportunity of meddling in New York’s mayoral race, flexing real political muscle with imagined, even potentially self-destructive, results. As for Adams, it would merely make official what we already know.