NYC Mayor Adams insists he never called Texas Gov. Abbott a ‘racist’ over sending migrant buses to cities run by Black mayors

Mayor Adams attempted to untangle a rhetorical jumble surrounding the city’s migrant crisis Tuesday when he clarified that he didn’t call Texas Gov. Greg Abbott a “racist” — a day after pointing out that Abbott is sending migrants only to cities run by Black mayors.

The mayor was responding to remarks from WABC talk show host Sid Rosenberg, who kicked off the discussion when he read from a tabloid headline that quoted Adams as describing the Texas Republican’s tactic of directing migrants to places like New York City as “racist.”

Adams did not, in fact, use the term Monday, but on Tuesday he also didn’t deny that’s what he was suggesting.

“If you look at my comment — and I put out a written statement — I didn’t use the term racist,” Adams told Rosenberg. “What I did was show the facts. We have 108,000 cities in America — 108,000. Many of them are Democratic cities. Where did Abbott send the migrants? To New York, to Chicago, to Denver, to Los Angeles, to Houston, to Washington. Each one of those cities are run by Black mayors. Each one of them. He passed over thousands of cities to make his way to cities that are run by Black mayors. So when you look at the facts, you have to scratch your head and say, ‘He couldn’t find any cities en route to make his political statement?’”

Adams’ response came after Rosenberg, a white conservative radio personality who supports former President Donald Trump, went on a screed about how he’s “sick of hearing that word ‘racist’” and appeared to lecture the mayor, who’s Black, on the topic.

“I gotta tell you something, Eric, when people start to use that word ‘racist’ every time something doesn’t go their way, sometimes they are unfairly labeled ‘racist’ themselves,” he said.

A day earlier, Adams put out a written statement critical of Abbott, who the mayor has publicly gone after before for busing migrants to New York and other cities after they’ve crossed the Mexican border into Texas.

“Not only is this behavior morally bankrupt and devoid of any concern for the well-being of asylum seekers, but it is also impossible to ignore the fact that Abbott is now targeting five cities run by Black mayors,” he said in the written statement. “Put plainly, Abbott is using this crisis to hurt Black-run cities.”

On Tuesday, the mayor also claimed that government officials in Texas are telling migrant asylum seekers that “if you want to go to any other city, you have to pay, but if you want to go to New York, we will send you there for free,” Adams said.

“There was a clear target on these cities,” he added.

Adams has struggled to manage the flood of migrants who’ve come to the city since April 2022 and last week said the crisis has forced the city into fiscal austerity measures that may lead to public service cuts.

Abbott’s press secretary, Andrew Mahaleris, claimed Adams is “spreading falsehoods and outright lies” in accusing the Texas governor of sending migrants to New York against their will and that New York “is only dealing with a fraction of what our small border communities deal with on a day-to-day basis.”

“He knows full well these migrants willingly chose to go to New York City,” Mahaleris said Tuesday. “Mayor Adams, along with Mayor Bowser, Mayor Lightfoot, and Mayor Kenney, were proud to tout their self-declared sanctuary city status until Texas began busing migrants to New York City, Washington, D.C., Chicago and Philadelphia to provide relief to our overrun and overwhelmed border communities.”

Mahaleris did not address Adams’ claims that race factored into Abbott’s decision making.

The mayor’s remarks Monday and Tuesday aren’t the first time the mayor has pointed to race as playing a role in issues he’s had to confront or how he’s perceived through media coverage.

But Adams has shied away from using the term “racist” or “racism” outright.

Last year, he suggested that coverage of him was being skewed by a predominantly white press corps, saying at the time that his story “is being interpreted by people that don’t look like me.” Days later, after one reporter framed a question about Adams as viewing reporters as “racist,” the mayor quickly pointed out that he did not use that term at the time, either.

On Tuesday, during a press conference after his discussion with Rosenberg, Adams called for the newspaper that quoted him using the term “racist” to issue a correction.

“I never used the term ‘racist,’” he said. “That was a little creative journalism.”