From Rat Czar to Fishgate: The wild and weird moments of Eric Adams’ chaotic mayorship so far

Your support helps us to tell the story

Support Now

Find out moreClose

As your White House correspondent, I ask the tough questions and seek the answers that matter.

Your support enables me to be in the room, pressing for transparency and accountability. Without your contributions, we wouldn't have the resources to challenge those in power.

Your donation makes it possible for us to keep doing this important work, keeping you informed every step of the way to the November election

Andrew Feinberg

White House Correspondent

Eric Adams has been hit with a string of federal criminal charges, including corruption and bribery, the first time in modern history for a sitting New York City mayor.

Prosecutors for the Southern District of New York unveiled a sprawling five-count indictment against Adams, accusing him of seeking and accepting “illegal campaign contributions to his 2021 mayoral campaign, as well as other things of value, from foreign nationals” on Thursday.

Adams is no stranger to controversy, however, having been the subject of multiple gaffes and meme-worthy moments since he took office two years ago.

Throughout his tenure as mayor, Adams has been locked in a fierce battle with millions of the city’s residents. "Everyone that knows me knows one thing: I hate rats," he said at a press conference in October 2022.

Getting rid of rats has been somewhat of an obsession for Adams, with the city’s first ever “Urban Rat Summit” taking place earlier this month.

Last April, he appointed Kathleen Corradi as his right hand in the battle against rodents, known colloquially as “The Rat Czar.”

Corradi’s role was described as helping to "fight the real enemy — New York City’s relentless rat population.”

Earlier this year, Adams proudly hailed a “revolution” in waste disposal – a wheeled trash can.

Social media users were quick to mock the mayor, after he unveiled the rollable, black plastic trash can at a press conference and declared the city was taking “the next step forward in our ‘Trash Revolution’.”

“It’s some kind of wheeled bin, American ingenuity knows no bounds,” one user wrote on X in response to the clip, which showed Adams wheeling out the bin with Jay-Z’s Empire State of Mind blasting in the background.

This was Adams’ second trash-related gaffe of 2024, following the introduction of side-loading garbage trucks in the city in February. Though touted by officials as a “historic win in the war on trash,” the machines were decried as old news even to much smaller cities in America.

Adams loves a soundbite, and has declared on visits to other cities that “New York is the xxxx of America” - whether that be Athens, Istanbul, Tel Aviv, Mexico City, and Islamabad.

Sadly, some of his quotes have been remembered for less positive reasons. When asked to describe New York in one word during an interview last December, he replied “New York” and then went on to give an unorthodox ode to his city.

“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 is celebrating a new business that’s open,” Adams told local news outlet PIX11.

He also told Vanity Fair in 2021 that his favorite concert had been a performance in Brooklyn by Curtis Mayfield, during which a piece of lighting rig fell on the soul singer and paralyzed him.

In 2022, Adams announced an exciting and futuristic new project, a Robot police officer.

The mayor said, however, that during a two-month trial period in Times Square, the machine needed to be guarded by a real NYPD officer at all times. During the press conference Adams also attempted to make the “heart hands” sign with the armless robot.

The Knightscope K5 security robot, which weighed about 400 pounds and moved at a maximum speed of three miles per hour, was taken out of commission in December 2023 and has been in storage ever since.

The mayor has promoted himself as a fierce proponent of veganism, though with one small problem – he is constantly seen eating fish.

Adams embraced veganism around seven years ago after experiencing diabetic symptoms and has regularly promoted the vegan diet as healthier for both humans and the planet. However, he has frequently been spotted eating fish, including at the upscale midtown Italian restaurant, Osteria La Baia, where is known to order “fish and salad.”

During his 2021 mayoral campaign, he invited members of the press to his apartment in Brooklyn, where reporters found both salmon and dairy in his fridge. Adams’ campaign later claimed that the items belonged to his son.

In response to accusations he has been lying about his veganism, Adams has decried his critics as “the food police.”

During the same 2021 campaign, in full view of a group of journalists camped outside his residence, Adams engaged in some questionable driving practices.

According to one reporter, who witnessed the bizarre (and illegal) incident, he saw the then-mayoral hopeful “leave his apartment, climb into the car from the passenger side, shimmy into the driver’s seat, then drive the car up onto the sidewalk”.

“He drove blithely on the sidewalk until he was past the jam, then turned right on Stuyvesant Avenue,” the reporter added.