NYC Mayor Eric Adams Criticized For Referencing 9/11 In Praising “Greatest City on the Globe’

“New York. This is a place where every day you wake up, you could experience everything from a plane crashing into our Trade Center to a person who’s celebrating a new business that’s open."

In a comment that immediately caused a backlash, the mayor of New York City referenced the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center in calling New York the “greatest city on the globe.”

In an interview that took place on Sunday, Dec. 17 on WPIX-TV, Mayor Eric Adams was asked to describe 2023 by Dan Mannarino.

“New York,” Adams said. “This is a place where every day you wake up, you could experience everything from a plane crashing into our Trade Center to a person who’s celebrating a new business that’s open. This is a very, very complicated city, and that’s why it’s the greatest city on the globe.”

Eric Adams gives the worst answer any politician has ever given to a soft ball question. pic.twitter.com/sYL3cj5yCf

— Tim Miller (@Timodc) December 18, 2023

Many perplexed viewers and social media users questioned why he would reference such a tragedy in such a way.

Two days later, during a press conference at City Hall, knowing that people had his head on a block for his response, the mayor attempted to clean up the statement.

Kind of.

Instead of Adams, whose first term has been bumpy, giving a clearer explanation or admitting that he may flubbed the question, he went for a third option.

“The sentence police that sit in front of the TV and say, ‘Let’s wait to see Eric Adams make one sentence that we can turn into a front page’,” Adams said.

Adams said that his reference to the tragedy was not made to diminish the horrors that took place that day.

“Using the analogy of the complexity of what can happen in the city from planes landing on our Hudson River to all the other things—that was my comment,” Adams said. “People knew what I was saying.”