Over the last few days, there have been a lot of rumors about President Donald Trump potentially putting his thumb on the scale in New York City's upcoming mayoral election.
We have heard reports that Trump has offered current Mayor Eric Adams a spot in his administration and also that the president has told certain candidates that they have a deadline to leave the race or suffer his wrath.
Trump is not the only one making moves, however, as a major donor who previously endorsed Adams flipped his endorsement to impact the race and force the incumbent out of the contest.
Reports surfaced earlier this week that the Trump administration was in talks with Adams to offer him a cushy post after his term was over to get him to drop out of the election.
On Thursday, those reports offered a bit more clarification, with a Trump insider claiming that Adams was being offered an ambassador position to Saudi Arabia, which would make sense for two reasons.
First, recent polling has shown that the only candidate who has a chance to win this election against Zohran Mamdani would be former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, but that is only in a head-to-head race, so we need Adams and Curtis Sliwa, the GOP candidate, to drop out.
Second, the bribery charges that were previously dropped by the Trump DOJ against Adams stemmed from allegations that he accepted money from Turkey, so this would put Adams near his Middle East buddies.
While the White House and Trump have been largely mum on these rumors, another report surfaced late on Thursday night suggesting that Trump had told multiple candidates in the race they had fewer than two weeks to exit the race.
Trump reportedly called billionaire businessman John Catsimatidis to express his worry, with Catsimatidis stating, “He is concerned about the New York City race. He does not want a socialist mayor, and he said, ‘It’s not going to happen’ under his watch.”
He further stated that Trump told him he wants this field whittled down over “the next 10 days” to allow the best-qualified candidate to face off against the socialist in November.
Now, I am already on the record saying that I don’t support Adams being rewarded with a position in this administration amid what appears to be evidence of his blatant corruption, and I also don’t like the idea of this much weight being put into a mayoral election by a sitting president. An endorsement is one thing, but this manipulation could be and likely will be considered election interference by Democrats, so he is just giving the left more ammo to use against the GOP in the 2026 cycle, as well as another possible charge for impeachment.
Bill Ackman had previously endorsed Adams for mayor, but he just decided to pull that endorsement to back Cuomo, who, if he is heads up, is projected to beat Mamdani by double digits.
The billionaire donor stated, “Eric has been a charismatic and high-energy leader who has shown real empathy and provided critical moral and other support to NY communities in their time of need.”
He continued, “All of that said, Eric should step aside and not run for reelection. Eric’s polls have deteriorated substantially since the primary, and it has become increasingly clear that he does not have a chance to beat @ZohranKMamdani.”
I believe Adams will leave the race, regardless of what he is saying publicly, because he is all about being bought and paid for, in my opinion, and that will be easy enough to do here. So, then the problem becomes Sliwa, the GOP candidate, who, at this point, has refused to back down. He won’t win much support, but it could be just enough to hand Mamdani the win, so the power players are going to have to start to get creative if they truly want him out of the race to give Cuomo a shot at beating the upstart Democrat, a term I use very loosely when describing Mamdani.
