In your usual week press conferencemayor of new york city Eric Adamswho is currently under federal indictment on corruption charges, declined to answer a question about how recently he had spoken with donald trumpor other members of the former president’s team. This was surprising in the wake of Trump’s warm words toward the city’s mayor during Trump’s incendiary campaign. Demonstration at Madison Square Garden this past Sunday.

“Give me another question, please,” Adams snapped at WABC-TV reporter NJ Burkett. “You missed your chance.”

Burkett’s first question was an attempt to return to comments Adams had made a week earlier, when Burkett suggested that Adams had “in essence, defended Trump when it came to the question of whether he’s a fascist or not.”

Adams seemed to avoid the question of judging Trump after the immediately famous Madison Square Garden rally, at which a featured speaker described Puerto Rico —a U.S. territory and ancestral home to more than a million New Yorkers—as “a floating island of garbage,” while Trump falsely claimed that the Biden administration and FEMA “haven’t even responded in North Carolina” after Hurricane Helena.

“They spent their money bringing in illegal immigrants, so they didn’t have money for Georgia, North Carolina, Alabama, Tennessee, Florida and South Carolina,” Trump told the MSG crowd. “They spent all their money bringing illegal immigrants and flying them on beautiful jet planes. … They would fly them to the center of our country, our beautiful, beautiful country.”

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani also spoke at the rally, suggesting that most or all Palestinians were terrorists who “are taught to kill us at two years old… They may have good people. Sorry, I don’t.” HE”. take your chances with people who are taught to kill Americans at two o’clock. I am on the side of Israel. You are on Israel’s side. Donald Trump is on Israel’s side. terrorists.”

Trump also offered unexpected words of support to Adams, who has suggested he was “targeted” by federal prosecutors for his criticism of the Biden administration for its “failed immigration policies.”

“You know, I want to thank Mayor Adams because Mayor Adams has been treated pretty poorly,” Trump told the MSG MAGA crowd. “You know, when he said this whole thing about immigrants coming to New York, this is just not sustainable. You know, we can’t do it. We’re trying to run a city. We have 100,000 immigrants we can’t do it.”

Adams has been “really great,” Trump continued. “He said they shouldn’t call Trump a dictator because that’s not true… That was nice. I want to thank Mayor Adams for going through a tough time with these people,” an apparent reference to federal prosecutors. “These are nuts, by the way. They have used the Department of Justice as a weapon against their political opponents. I am under investigation more than the late, great Alphonse Capone.”

Perhaps that helps explain why Adams posted a tweet after the rally that seemed to deplore the rhetoric without naming names: “The words of hate that were used by some at today’s rally at Madison Square Garden were completely unacceptable. No matter who says it, hate is hate and there is no place for it in our city. “As Americans, we must always stand against racism, anti-Semitism and misogyny.”

But when confronted in the Blue Room at City Hall, Adams took a page from Trump’s deflection playbook in his response to Burkett’s question, attacking the media for having the wrong priorities by asking him to clarify his relationship with the impeached former president. multiple times that he could soon be elected for a second term.

“Let me tell you what I find insulting,” Adams said. “I find it insulting when there are children dying on top of trains based on what they are imitating on social media. A housing crisis in the city, affordability, thousands of seniors cannot know if they will be able to live in the city. I talk to my mayors around the country and they tell me about the real problems we are having. And with everything that is happening to ordinary New Yorkers, we are asking questions about whether someone is a fascist or whether someone is Hitler. That’s insulting to me. …I’m not going to get involved in that.

“Everyone needs to reject the rhetoric, because after Election Day we still have to be America and not the divided states,” Adams continued, in his now familiar preacher or lecturer style. he lectured reporters. “And if people can’t understand the real problems that New Yorkers face, and I find it humiliating that… here we are having this conversation about this silly topic.”

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On the steps of City Hall, public defender Jumaane Williams, who would succeed Adams if the mayor is forced to resign, told WBAI radio that New Yorkers had a “need to know” whether Adams was collaborating with Trump. “The mayor’s comments have been disgraceful,” Williams said. “They have been disgusting from a so-called Democratic mayor who has been more critical of Biden and Harris than Trump and Vance. It makes me believe that maybe he would have wanted to stay in the Republican Party. “I should have done it and just been a MAGA supporter.”