After breaking bread with President Trump in Florida and then attending his inauguration in Washington, Mayor Eric Adams would seem especially qualified to opine on Mr. Trump’s polarizing first day in office.
But upon his return to New York City, Mr. Adams declined on Tuesday to say much of anything about the new president. He had nothing bad to say about the pardons of the Jan. 6 rioters or the move to end federal D.E.I. programs.
The mayor of the largest city in the country had not lost his voice. Rather, he had chosen to mute himself.
Mr. Adams said that if he had any differences of opinion with the Republican president, he would share them privately with Mr. Trump.
“If I do disagree, I will communicate with him directly on them,” Mr. Adams said during his weekly media availability.
The mayor, a Democrat, had no opinion on Mr. Trump’s efforts to outlaw birthright citizenship, a right enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. He had nothing negative to say about the president’s pardon of Jan. 6 defendants — rather, he said the Justice Department was politicized. He did not remark on the president’s decision to withdraw from the Paris climate accords.
It remains to be seen if Mr. Adams will be more outspoken in a pretaped interview with Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News personality, that airs Tuesday night.
“People often say, well, you know, ‘you don’t sound like a Democrat’ and ‘you seem to have left the party,’” Mr. Adams said in a preview of the interview. “No, the party left me and it left working-class people.”
(In 2021, Mr. Adams described Mr. Carlson as someone who “perpetuates racist, anti-immigrant propaganda.”)
Mr. Adams’s posture seemed all the more noteworthy in contrast with that of his fellow Democratic leaders in New York. The governor and attorney general immediately declared their opposition to the president’s actions and promised to take steps to stymie them.
But Mr. Adams is not just any New York Democrat. The mayor, a conservative Democrat who was once a registered Republican, was indicted on five federal corruption charges in September.
He is facing trial in April, just weeks before a contested primary from which he is hoping to again emerge as the Democratic candidate for mayor. He has repeatedly argued that he is the target of a Biden Justice Department conspiracy because of his criticism of Mr. Biden’s immigration policies.
President Trump has expressed an openness to pardoning the mayor, suggesting a kinship based on the two men’s shared assertions, presented without evidence, that they are victims of a justice system run amok.
On Tuesday, around the same time Mr. Adams was declining to take a position on birthright citizenship, the New York State attorney general, Letitia James, announced a lawsuit seeking to stop the president’s “unlawful action.”
Seventeen other states joined in the lawsuit. So did the city of San Francisco.
Gov. Kathy Hochul on Monday evening vowed that “New York is prepared to take any action within our power to ensure that those born in our state have all the rights and protections that prior generations of new Americans have been granted.”
“Birthright citizenship isn’t just enshrined in our Constitution; it’s key to the fundamental promise of America,” she said.
Mr. Adams declined to say anything of substance on the topic, despite multiple opportunities.
When a reporter asked him about the birthright citizenship executive order, as well as the pardons of Jan. 6 defendants and the decision to withdraw from the Paris climate accords, Mr. Adams offered a rhetorical shrug.
“You know, there are a host of E.O.s. that were done,” Mr. Adams said, referring to executive orders. “And you know what, I do E.O.s, and people sometimes don’t agree with my E.O.s.”
Mr. Trump, he added, “has given me that opportunity to communicate with him directly on issues we disagree, and I respect that.”
Mr. Adams justified his public silence by pointing to a desire to start his relationship with the president on the right foot.
“You shouldn’t start out of the gate criticizing,” the mayor said.
He also pointed to the nation’s psyche.
“I don’t want to be part of what feeds the anxiety of going back and forth in this public discourse that we’re seeing,” he said.
Adrienne Adams, the New York City Council speaker, did not find Mr. Adams’s explanation convincing. “New Yorkers deserve straight answers from their leaders,” she wrote on social media. “This shouldn’t be that hard.”
When Mr. Adams decided to drive down to Washington for the inauguration, he had to cancel several scheduled appearances in celebration of Martin Luther King’s Birthday, a decision that raised eyebrows among New York Democrats.
But Mr. Adams argued on Tuesday that Dr. King would understand.
“He talked about ‘we must put partisan politics aside to do what’s best for our country,’ and I live my life through the vision of Dr. King,” Mr. Adams said.
