Al Sharpton still wanted Eric Adams to come to his MLK event, the day after Trump meeting

Two days before President Donald Trump’s inauguration and Martin Luther King Jr. Day – coinciding on Monday – more than a dozen of New York’s most prominent Democratic elected officials vowed to uphold King’s legacy at a National Action Network rally.

But an undercurrent of the annual event this year, charging the crowded room and even some of the remarks, was Mayor Eric Adams’ markedly absent criticism of the incoming Trump administration of late. Adams was indicted on federal corruption charges in September, to which he has pleaded not guilty. His trial is set to begin just nine weeks before the Democratic primary in which he’s running for reelection against a crowded field of challengers – at least four of whom were also in attendance on Saturday. 

Adams’ aversion to criticizing Trump has fueled speculation that he’s looking to obtain a presidential pardon, which Trump has said he would consider granting. Adams’ visit to Mar-a-Lago on Friday to meet with Trump only reinforced that speculation, though City Hall said he didn't discuss his criminal case. NAN leader the Rev. Al Sharpton, who has stood by Adams and said that support for the mayor persists in Black communities, has warned that that could change if Adams were to become too aligned with Trump. 

The potential for corruption charges to be career-ending is something Adams himself acknowledged on Saturday, in lamenting the corruption case against ex.-Lt. Gov. Brian Benjamin, who was there too.

Those charges, which led to Benjamin’s resignation in 2022, were dropped Friday following the death of a key witness. “His family was traumatized,” Adams said, comparing the case to the government surveillance and intimidation of King. “What about the hundreds of thousands of dollars that he had to spend in legal fees? What about the desecration of his name, and the leaking of information, the same way they taped and listened to the phone calls of Dr. King to discredit him?”

Sharpton said that Adams had a right to meet with the incoming president. “Our elected officials have got to talk to the president – I’ve got to walk on the president,” Sharpton said. “But be careful of people that will manipulate and use your presence in a way that is against the interests of your people. And we should be careful not to let them turn us against each other.”

Needling Adams a little about the meeting, Sharpton said that Adams called him asking if he should come to the event, and that he encouraged him to. “‘You come every year, and you’ve got to come this year,’” Sharpton said he told Adams. “‘I don't know what Trump did to you down there. If he did something to you, I can baptize you again. I might have to put you down in the water this time,’” he said to laughs in the crowd.

Other speakers’ comments about Trump stood in contrast to Adams’ hesitation to criticize. “Don’t let them use immigrants to separate us. Don’t let them use immigrants to be scapegoats,” said state Attorney General Letitia James. “Because we’ve been there before.” Her speech received some of the loudest applause of the morning, and a standing ovation from some in the crowd.

Gov. Kathy Hochul didn’t mention Trump by name or offer the harshest condemnation of the day, but spoke about the need act on King’s values in the face of coming challenges. “We will meet the moment of the day and the challenges that will start on Monday,” she said. “I assure you that New York will always be that beacon of hope, the place where the women’s rights movement started, the place where the NAACP was founded, the place where the environmental justice movement moved forward, where we protect LGBTQ rights at Stonewall.”

Adams didn’t mention or reference the incoming president at all in his remarks. After speaking about the racism both he and Sharpton faced in their early days, Adams instead defended his criticism of the Biden administration, drawing a comparison with King. “Dr. King talked about the Vietnam War, and it wasn't popular. There were folks of color who were saying, ‘Why are you talking about this national issue? Why are you not standing up and allowing the president to do what he needs to do,’ and ‘Don't criticize the president,’ and Dr. King said he had a moral obligation,” Adams said. “That’s the obligation I had when we saw $6.9 billion leave our city to deal with a national migrant crisis, when we should have been investing in those children and those services that we should have been investing in. It was the right thing to do, and I don’t care if it’s a Democrat, Republican, socialist – I don’t care who’s the president. I’m going to defend this city.”

Those remarks got some cheers from the audience, but also varying levels of pushback from both Sharpton and Public Advocate Jumaane Williams. “The next time people tell you, ‘I had $6.9 billion I had to spend on them, not you,’ ask them, ‘Why didn't you spend it on me (before), when you had it?” Williams said. “We have always had that money, if leaders believed that what we were going through was a crisis.”

Sharpton said that while cities shouldn’t be starved of funding, it’s also important to focus on the “civil rights” side of the issue. “We do not want unilateral breaking up of families by this incoming president, and we do not want mass deportation without some guardrails,” he said right after Adams’ remarks.

While NAN usually holds this event on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, which is Monday, the organization rescheduled this year because of the inauguration. NAN will be going down to Washington D.C. on that day to celebrate at Metropolitan AME Church. “As Donald Trump puts his hand up to be sworn in the 47th president of the United States, we will be three miles away, putting our hands up, taking the oath to keep Doctor King's dream alive,” Sharpton said.