In the wake of Donald Trump’s landslide victory in the 2024 presidential election, many of us have leveraged our shock and outrage into speculation. There has been furious debate online about which policies lost Kamala Harris the election, or whether she would have defeated Donald Trump with a different VP pick. New York City Mayor Eric Adams, on the other hand, has questioned whether Harris was the right choice at all.
In a press conference held in the hours after the election was called for Trump, Adams suggested that he would have been a much better presidential candidate than Kamala Harris.
“Kamala’s approach to defeating a convicted felon in the presidential election was to lean into her role as a prosecutor, but look where that got her. The truth is, the American people don’t want a narc in the White House. Instead, you have to fight fire with fire. What I mean is, you need someone who understands Trump, who thinks like him. If Donald Trump is corrupt, erratic, and consistently subject to foreign influence, then they should’ve picked someone with the same background. Maybe it takes a criminal to defeat a criminal. And, you know, these are qualities that I happen to possess, and I think if they had given me a shot I could’ve beaten him at his own game.”
In addition to his corrupt administration, shady foreign connections of questionable legality, and his tendency to lie in situations where such fabrications are entirely unnecessary, Eric Adams highlighted his success in local politics, his uncanny ability to unite his constituents in hatred towards him, and his recent proficiency in the Turkish language as qualities that both he and Trump shared—all of which made him a better candidate to defeat Trump than Kamala Harris.
In an off-camera remark that has since gone viral, Adams expressed hope that if elected he could, like Trump, use his powers as President to pardon himself before he was convicted on any of the federal charges he is faced with.
