New York City Mayor Eric Adams rebuffed recent attacks against former President Donald Trump and said Trump’s Madison Square Garden event should go ahead.
“I have heard those terms hurled at me by some political leaders in the city, using terms like [Nazi leader Adolph] Hitler and fascist,” the Democratic mayor said at a press conference in New York City on Oct. 26.
“I know what Hitler has done, and I know what a fascist regime looks like. I think, as I have called for over and over again, that the level of conversation, I think we can all dial down the temperature.”
Adams also detailed a significant police presence planned for Trump’s event at Madison Square Garden in Manhattan on Oct. 27.
He made the comment after Vice President Kamala Harris and her surrogates criticized Trump in recent days after Trump’s former chief of staff John Kelly accused him of praising Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Germany dictator’s generals.
Referring to the claims, Harris told voters on Oct. 23 at a CNN town hall, “I invite you to listen and go online to listen to John Kelly” make the allegations against the 45th president. “This is a serious, serious issue.”
Trump and previous members of his administration have fiercely opposed the claims made by Kelly.
Trump denounced the stories on Oct. 24, saying on social media platform Truth Social that Kelly “made up a story out of pure Trump Derangement Syndrome Hatred.”
Adams, who is currently facing federal bribery charges, said on Oct. 26: “This is America. This is New York, and I think it’s important that we allow individuals to exercise their right to get their message clear to New Yorkers. And our job as a city and as a police department is to make sure they can do that ... in a peaceful way.”
Adams’s comments about lowering “the temperature” also appeared to echo a comment made by President Joe Biden earlier this year in the immediate aftermath of the first assassination attempt against Trump in Pennsylvania. At the time, Biden called on Americans to “cool it down” after the shooting, in which a bullet clipped Trump’s ear.
Trump became the subject of a second assassination attempt in mid-September after the Secret Service directed gunfire at an individual who was pointing a rifle through a perimeter fence while the former president was golfing in Florida.
In mid-October, Trump spoke at the Al Smith charity dinner in New York and made reference to the federal charges Adams is facing, as well as those he is facing.
“They’ve gone after me, Mr. Mayor, and you’re peanuts compared to what they’ve done to me,” he said on Oct. 18. “And you’re going to be OK.”
