Eric Adams Played Himself—And Screwed New Yorkers in the Process

I spent a significant chunk of last night watching and rewatching a short video posted by a Fox News correspondent of Eric Adams, caught that evening at a steakhouse dinner with Republican billionaire John Catsamatidis reacting to the news that the Trump Justice Department is directing federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York to drop the corruption charges against him.

It was the outcome Adams had been, sweatily and abjectly, groveling for ever since Trump's election. What, the reporter asks in the video, is the mayor's initial reaction to the news? Adams deflects; he needs to talk to his lawyer, he says, "and get a better understanding of exactly what's taking place now."

The mayor's manner is formal, the muscles of his face tight. At a few points it is possible to imagine that he is fighting to hold back a great upwelling of maniacal laughter, the irrepressible echoing cackle of a sketch comedy actor breaking character or a man who has cheated his fate and gotten away with it. But that possibility of suppressed laughter passes over his face like a shadow on the water, a trick of the light. His eyes are restless, darting from the reporter to somewhere off to the left, and it suddenly seems that, far from mirth, he is feeling the gut-lurching plunge of someone who is slowly realizing that this apparent good news actually heralds a whole new depth of suck.