New York City's mayor keeps making unsettling references to disaster flight scenarios

New York City Mayor Eric Adams used analogies referencing crashing airplanes when describing his role and the city.

Johnny Nunez/WireImage via Getty Images

• NYC mayor Eric Adams has recently been getting flack for a few media blunders this week.
• In an interview, Adams made a curious reference to 9/11 when describing the city.
• A day later, Adams likened his role to a pilot and his critics are hoping he crashes the plane.

When New York City Mayor Eric Adams thinks of his job or the city, he sometimes thinks of crashing planes.

In the past week, Adams has twice used disastrous flight scenarios for his analogies when addressing arguably the last US city where a politician would want to make those comparisons.

During an interview with WPIX that aired on December 17, Adams was asked to sum up 2023 in one word and explain its meaning.

"New York," Adams quickly said. Then he invoked 9/11.

"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," he said. "This is a very, very complicated city. And that's why it's the greatest city on the globe."

A day later, Adams hosted a community meeting at an elementary school in Queens that was attended by many local leaders.

Before he started taking questions from the room, Adams took a moment to share how he had been bullied as a kid and to address his critics.

"So, all those who want to yell at me and call me names, I've been there and not done that. I'm focused on recovering this city," he said.

Then, again, he started to think about planes.

"I am the pilot, folks, and you are all passengers. Stop praying for me to crash the plane. Pray for me to land the plane because there's no parachutes on this plane," he said.

"We're all going down together. We're going to land together, or we're going to go down together," Adams added.

This isn't the first time Adams — a former police captain who was elected as the 110th mayor of New York in November 2021 — has made curious comparisons.

In 2022, he once said that it's hard to tell the difference between someone who's "hooked on cheese" and someone "hooked on heroin." He also compared himself to Franklin D. Roosevelt during the Great Depression when he addressed his first 100 days in office last April.

Adams responded to the backlash to his 9/11 comment on Tuesday during a press conference.

"To the analogy of the complexity of what could happen in this city, from planes landing on our Hudson River to all the other things — that was my comment," he said. "Those who take my comments in good faith are not going to try to turn them around … People knew what I was saying. The city is complex."

Fair enough. But couldn't you use literally any other analogy to make that point?

A spokesperson from Adams' office did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent during the weekend.

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