Finally, a proposed deportation I can get behind. Instead of transporting immigrants, undocumented and otherwise, to countries such as El Salvador, Uganda, Rwanda, Eswatini, and South Sudan, the Trump administration is at long last on the ball with its plans to send New York City mayor Eric Adams to sunny Saudi Arabia as our new ambassador.
This is most likely the brainchild of Steve Witkoff, United States special envoy to the Middle East, because he’s the one who met with the mayor in Florida last week. If you’re wondering what qualifications the former Brooklyn borough president has concerning Middle Eastern affairs, you’re not alone. But from what I can tell, it’s not so much that Adams is needed over there as that he’s not wanted here.
See, the president of the United States seems to be very worried about Zohran Mamdani, a self-described democratic socialist from Queens, who ate the primaries with 56 percent of the vote. The president doesn’t like socialist anything—or democratic anything, either, it seems. He wants Adams to drop out of the race so that former governor Andrew Cuomo, who resigned in disgrace, will win, and make New York City Great Again.
Oh boy.
Intriguingly, Cuomo says he doesn’t want the president to interfere “with my race,” and has termed their fraught relationship “a dysfunctional marriage.” Trump and Cuomo have three divorces between them, four if you count Cuomo’s breakup with TV chef and author Sandra Lee. Since both men have been accused of harassing women, and on the president’s end much, much worse, I pity anyone who’d marry either one of them, but since there have been some reports (which Cuomo has denied) that the candidate allegedly welcomed Trump’s help in a phone conversation, maybe they are perfect for one another.
Trump is perhaps making up for scuttling a previous chance to oust Adams, who was facing charges of wire fraud, bribery, conspiracy, and the solicitation of illegal foreign campaign contributions.
If found guilty, Adams could have faced a maximum of 45 years in prison. By dismissing the five-count indictment, Trump could be said to have saved taxpayers around $40,000 a year—the annual cost of incarcerating the average federal inmate. But that would have been a small price to get him out of Gracie Mansion.
As of March of this year, only 20 percent of New Yorkers approved of the job he’s doing, and more than half said he should resign. Instead, he withdrew from the Democratic-primary race and announced that he would run again as an independent.
The Trump administration admits that the dismissal of Adams’s case came about because the charges were keeping him from concentrating on one of the president’s top priorities, curtailing illegal immigration, and had nothing to do with the facts of the case against him. The presiding judge, Dale C. Ho, wrote, “Everything here smacks of a bargain: dismissal of the indictment in exchange for immigration policy concessions.”
Adams’s response? “I’m running for re-election, and you know what, I’m going to win.”
No, Mr. Adams, you’re not. You are currently polling at 7 percent, behind Curtis Sliwa.
Steve Witkoff, I’m grateful for your desire to chase Adams out of town, but I can’t see the mayor in Saudi Arabia. First of all, it is an autocratic monarchy based on Sharia law. There are myriad civil-rights abuses including against women and Black people. Many immigrants from African and Asian countries are trafficked there as slave laborers.
And then there are some extreme cultural differences. Could the mayor live without “swagger”? Without nightclubs that serve alcohol? Without wannabe Russian mobsters like his buddies Johnny and Robert Petrosyants?
Doesn’t anyone remember September 11?
In my humble opinion, I think he would be better off in Turkey. He was charged with allegedly receiving more than $100,000 in luxury travel and perks from various Turkish friends, and illegal campaign contributions for his first mayoral run. Clearly, he likes Turkey! A lot! He’s been there six or seven times. He even brought his son along on one of those junkets.
Make the man happy. Maybe he’ll stay away.
Helen Schulman is a New York City–based writer and professor. She is the author of several books, including, most recently, the short-story collection Fools for Love
