Mayor Eric Adams likened himself to Jesus and claimed that critics are attacking his administration because it is largely made up of people of color, a video of the mayor’s speech showed.
Adams has been dealing with a migrant crisis in the Big Apple and recently faced off against the Democratic-led City Council — which rejected his veto on two controversial public safety bills last week.
He is also facing an FBI investigation into his mayoral campaign.
Adams told a crowd at a town hall in Brooklyn last week that he is under attack just like New York City’s first black mayor, David Dinkins, as he touted his administration’s diversity.
“We are moving the needle forward,” Adams said in the video, obtained by Fox News. “Is there more to do? You’re darn right there is, but this committed team is getting it done.”
He asked his five deputy mayors, all men and women of color, to stand up and be recognized by the crowd.
“Have you ever seen this much chocolate lead in the city of New York?” Adams asked as people applauded Sheena Wright, Anne Williams-Isom, Meera Joshi, Ana Almanzar and Maria Torres-Springer.
“And then go down the line, look who’s here. This is representative of the city. That’s why people are hating on me. You’re trying to figure out, why the hating on me?”
“First woman police commissioner of color,” he continued. “First Spanish-speaking police commissioner. First Spanish-speaking correction commissioner. Go through the line of what we’re doing in two years.”
He didn’t say exactly who the haters were, but strangely compared his ascension to the mayor’s office like Jesus cleansing the temple.
“This is a Matthew 21 and 12 moment,” he said, in reference to the famous Bible passage Matthew 21:12 in which Jesus flips over the tables of money lenders and merchants in the temple in Jerusalem.
“Jesus walked in the temple, he saw them doing wrong in the temple. He did what?” Adams asked.
“I went to city hall to turn the table over,” he said.
Adams, who has led the city since 2022, compared his time in office to that of Dinkins — who was the first black person elected mayor of New York City in 1990.
He said the election of Dinkins’ successor, Rudy Giuliani, was “a set-up for a setback.”
“It took us 30 years after what they did to David Dinkins, and who did we get after David Dinkins? Giuliani,” Adams said.
He said Dinkins’ critics “wore him down so much that black folks didn’t come out to vote.”
“They said, ‘You know what, we’re not coming out.’ They just beat him and wore him down over and over and over again,” Adams said.
“David Dinkins was the one who passed the legislation for safe city, safe streets that allowed us to get the resources we needed to bring down crime in our city. And who benefited from it? Giuliani. Giuliani.”