Is Mayor Adams, sorely burdened by inconvenient truths, telling a fib?
He says US Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries – Brooklyn Boyz both – are fully engaged with New York’s migrant crisis.
Only it’s like, you know, behind the scenes.
“They haven’t been quiet,” said Hizzoner Saturday. “I’ve been speaking with them on the phone. They’re fighting on behalf of New Yorkers.”
There is no evidence that this is true.
But suppose for a moment that Adams is indeed correct. What would that say about Schumer and Jeffries – the two most powerful Democrats in Congress – and their sidekick from the sticks, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of Albany?
The cause of Gotham’s misery is Washington, not New York – and thus no New Yorkers are better positioned to address the crisis than these three.
And yet here we have a trifecta of futility – collective impotence in the face of crisis. It’s hard to believe they’re not complicit, with Adams’ implausible assurances providing cover.
The mayor, of course, always thinks small. His sense of “fighting on behalf of New Yorkers” – more federal cash, work permits and such – is wildly irrelevant.
But consider this.
There’s a story, probably apocryphal yet squarely on point, of a post-presidential visit to China by Jimmy Carter– who on arrival delivers a human-rights lecture to whichever bloody-fisted thug was then running the Middle Kingdom.
The fellow listens politely, then gazes across the table at Carter and asks: “Do you not have enough citizens in need of human rights, Mr. President? We can send you some. Will 100 million be enough? Two-hundred million?”
This tale, fanciful though it may be, underscores a critical fact: While the world will never lack for people in search of human rights – euphemistically, “asylum-seekers” – America’s ability to accommodate them is profoundly limited.
But to say so requires both focus and courage – which Adams lacks, so he dissembles. And, anyway, the problem is not so much New York’s as it is the nation’s.
“Asylum-seekers” – in fact, economic migrants – are lined up from El Paso to El Salvador right now, with far too many in a New York state of mind, and the only appropriate response to this is a restoration of border integrity.
And – again – are any New Yorkers better positioned to address this than Democratic powerhouses Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries?
Here’s the rub: Doing so would mean bucking both a party in near-total thrall to progressive cultists, and a scandal-plagued White House with painfully obvious leadership issues of its own.
It’s so much safer to be silent, don’t you know, and work “behind the scenes.”
As if.
Meanwhile, New York groans under its ever-heavier border-crosser burden.
The municipal shelter system is in collapse; thousands of wholly unprepared children are enrolling in its schools, child pickpockets from south of the border seem to be working Times Square – paging the Artful Dodger! – and heaven only knows what the next plague will be.
Not that Schumer and Jeffries appear to care.
Adams needs to quit enabling them; obviously they’ll never return his favors.
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