Joe Biden is in New York City for the next three days to attend the opening of the United Nations General Assembly, meet with other world leaders, and take advantage of the city’s Democratic deep pockets to hold a few fundraisers.
One thing Biden will not do is cross paths with New York’s Mayor Eric Adams. The mayor has enraged Biden by speaking out about the lack of assistance to the city from Washington to care for the more than 100,000 asylum seekers who are crowded into shelters and temporary barracks across the city.
Biden wants to stay as far away from the migrant issue as possible, knowing that it’s a tar baby that could enmesh his administration in a no-win scenario. And Adams is hearing it from all sides, including Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-N.Y.), who thinks Adams should be doing more.
Adams continues to plead poverty, though. And with even more migrants coming to the city every day, Adams is running out of options.
“If we don’t receive help from the federal government and additional help from the state government, then this is going to come from somewhere, and it’s going to hurt low-income New Yorkers,” Adams said Sunday evening in an MSNBC appearance.
Adams at one time styled himself as the “Biden of Brooklyn,” noting the working-class roots they have in common. But the mayor of the nation’s largest city recently confirmed he and Biden — once close allies who could not get enough of each other’s company — hadn’t spoken since earlier this year.
Back in May, Adams was removed from a list of high-level Biden surrogates. And the last time they were seen together was in late January during the president’s visit to tout his Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Hudson Tunnel train project.
Since then, Adams’ criticism of the Biden administration has become increasingly pointed.
The decision for Biden and Adams to avoid each other was apparently mutual. The two former allies and friends can now barely stand each other.
“It just means that the two of them are trying to avoid exacerbating an already tense situation,” said a City Hall adviser, granted anonymity to speak candidly about the relationship.
Needless to say, with both men at loggerheads over the migrant issue, government response has been lacking at all levels.
“It’s unfortunate for sure,” Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso, another Democrat, said in an interview Monday. “The longer we wait for all levels of government to come to the table, the more we continue to make migrants collateral damage.”
But for Biden, coming to the table is a non-starter.
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