Guardians Angels Founder Curtis Sliwa told Newsmax on Friday that Mets owner Steve Cohen "put in a call" to New York City Mayor Eric Adams about exempting athletes and performers from the city's COVID19 vaccine mandate.
Cohen reportedly donated $1.5 million to a political action committee backing Adams in his Democratic primary last year, according to Politico. He also advised Adams' transition team after he won the mayoral election in November 2021.
Sliwa, a Republican mayoral candidate for New York City in 2021, said during his appearance on "Prime News" that Adams "dissed and dismissed" ordinary workers with his recent decision, some of whom were forced into unemployment by the mandate.
"All the heroes — the firefighters, the cops, the healthcare workers, the sanitation workers — who went out there as essential workers when the pandemic and the lockdown first took place in 2020, and then all of a sudden, the heroes he made zeros because he fired them," Sliwa said.
"The essential workers ... close to 2,000 who have been fired. No chance to get another job. No unemployment [benefits]. They're not even being considered to be rehired," the former candidate continued.
The anti-crime activist referred to the relationship between Cohen and Adams as "the classic quid pro quo."
"When you are the tool of the rich and the wealthy, as Eric Adams has always been, those are the people that you serve. Not the heroes who saved us in our time of need and crawled into the belly of the beast when people were dying of COVID," Sliwa said.
"There's new bumper stickers out in New York City, 'Don't blame me, I voted for Sliwa!'" he added.
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