An embattled Mayor Adams marched with veterans down Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue Saturday as he tried to shift the spotlight away from a federal probe of his campaign fundraising.
“We respect you. We love you. We adore you,” the mayor told the estimated 20,000 marchers who participated in the city’s 104th annual Veterans Day Parade, the largest of its kind in the nation.
“We sit under the flag and the tree of freedom because you ordered it with your blood commitment and dedication,” Adams said in a patriotism-drenched speech that quoted liberally from “The Star-Spangled Banner” and praised the American dream.
“People do not line our borders to leave America, they line our borders to come to America,” he said — touching on the migrant crisis that continues to roil the city.
But some of the 800 spectators who lined the 21-block parade route were unmoved by the mayor’s appearance.
“There he goes, the guy who they took his phones,” sniffed a Queens woman as Adams passed by.
They mayor’s electronic devices were seized this week by FBI agents investigating Adams’s 2021 campaign.
“The fact that they confiscated it means there’s something going on,” said the 64-year-old critic, who refused to give her name.