Eric Adams’s Social Media Presence Hits Another Weird Low

Mayor Eric Adams’s campaign has chosen to lean fully into his reputation for unseriousness and folly.

On Thursday, the mayor’s social media team posted a video of Adams appearing at various events across the city with the audio from the children’s movie The Boss Baby, following a popular TikTok and Instagram Reels trend.

“Every night, at dinner, I’ll be there. Every birthday party, I’ll be there. Every Christmas, I’ll be there,” the audio plays as clips of Adams at festivals and press conferences roll.

“I’m an on-the-ground mayor,” the post’s caption reads. “I’ll be there every step of the way as we make this a safer and more affordable city for all.”

Absurd posts like these—and that Trump pardon—are the only things keeping Adams from fading into relative obscurity. From multiple smoothie-making videos to poorly edited montages, to corny pop music–based skits, the Adams campaign is posting its way through it.

Trumpworld has long theorized about a shadowy deep state pulling the strings in Washington. During a 2023 Fox News appearance, Pam Bondi said deep-state actors had been “hiding in the shadows” throughout Trump’s first term. In his second, they’d “have a spotlight on them.”

Now, as U.S. attorney general, Bondi is purportedly living up to that promise. On Thursday, she produced a rare specific example of supposed deep-state evildoing: A man threw a Subway sandwich at a federal agent stationed in D.C. for Trump’s takeover.

According to court records and video footage of the incident, the man, Sean Charles Dunn, who happened to work for the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, approached a group of officers in front of a D.C. Subway sandwich shop at around 11 p.m.

Dunn reportedly called the heavily armed officers “fucking fascists,” yelling, “I don’t want you in my city!” before hurling a wrapped-up sandwich at the chest of a Customs and Border Protection agent, who—clad in tactical gear—was clearly unharmed. Dunn ran off but was apprehended, later saying, “I did it. I threw a sandwich.”

Clips of the incident went viral on social media, with users finding humor and many opportunities for puns in the episode. (A sampling: “Our gyro,” “Assault with a deli weapon,” “The suspect was acting provolone.”)

Pam Bondi, however, thinks the incident is no laughing matter. In fact, by her lights, Dunn’s sandwich throwing is the deep state manifest. In a post announcing Dunn’s firing, Bondi claimed, quite grandiosely, that “this is an example of the Deep State we have been up against for seven months as we work to refocus DOJ.”

Bondi continued, “You will NOT work in this administration while disrespecting our government and law enforcement”—a statement rendered laughable by the fact that, as NPR reported last week, a J6er who called for police officers to be killed during the Capitol riot enjoys a senior role at the department.

Jared Wise, now a DOJ adviser, spent his January 6, 2021, calling officers “Nazi[s]” and “Gestapo,” and shouting, “Yeah, fuck them! Yeah, kill ’em!” He is “a valued member of the Justice Department,” said a spokesperson, “and we appreciate his contributions to our team.”

The Trump administration’s heavy-handed revision of U.S. history has put fear into Smithsonian employees, eliciting comparisons among staffers to 1930s Germany. 

Workers at the government-created museums are censoring historical content that they believe could upset the president. Tensions have gotten so high that staffers have been warned against putting any complaints about the current climate at the institution in writing, while volunteers are considering quitting, HuffPost reported Thursday.

On Tuesday, White House officials laid out detailed plans to eliminate exhibits that they determined represented “improper ideology,” sparking alarm and panic among staffers. The memo challenged the application of educational lenses on race, gender, and oppression in U.S. history and accused the Smithsonian directly of advancing a “divisive, race-centered ideology.” 

The administration’s critiques also veered toward eugenics, torching a specific Smithsonian exhibit for describing race as “not a biological reality but a social construct” and underscoring that “race is a human invention.”

But the memo wasn’t a suggestion: failure to comply will turn the faucet off on funding for the world’s largest educational institution, effectively crippling the Smithsonian and nixing two-thirds of the organization’s revenue.

“Everyone is so scared,” one longtime Smithsonian worker told HuffPost.

“It’s an impossible position to put us in,” they continued. “We can’t be political with our content, but they have politicized everything. We need to prove we’re not partisan by following this very partisan directive. What are we supposed to do? It’s like up is down. It’s maddening.”

Employees have quietly conceded to the White House’s demands in an effort to save Smithsonian head Lonnie Bunch from losing his job. Staffers described Bunch as “loved” and “respected.” But kowtowing to Donald Trump has not yet proved to be a winning strategy for the Smithsonian.

Earlier this month, the Smithsonian removed Trump from its exhibit on impeachments, under direct pressure from the White House. That left the exhibit focusing on Presidents Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Bill Clinton, effectively returning the exhibit to the way it looked in 2008. The “American Presidency” wing’s revised signage explained that “only three presidents have seriously faced removal” over the course of American history.  The change was the result of a White House–initiated content review in the wake of an art director’s ousting.

The Smithsonian has since re-added Trump to the impeachment exhibit, but with some changes to how the proceedings against him are described.

Donald Trump was caught once again moving the goal posts for Russian President Vladimir Putin ahead of their summit in Alaska Friday.

During an interview on Fox News Radio Thursday, Trump bragged that his “relationship” with Putin had been the deciding factor in the autocrat’s pending decision to resolve his country’s invasion of Ukraine. But the U.S. president didn’t sound all that certain.

“Because of a certain relationship that he has with me running this country, he’s, he really, I believe now he’s convinced that he’s going to make a deal. He’s gonna make a deal—I think he’s going to, and we’re gonna find out,” Trump said.

“The second meeting is going to be very, very important. This meeting sets up—like a chess game—this meeting sets up the second meeting. But there is a 25 percent chance that this meeting will not be a successful meeting.”

Trump has repeatedly downplayed the historic contact between the two superpowers, a move that has frustrated European leaders. In an explosive phone call Wednesday, European leaders claimed Trump was leveraging his time with Putin to coordinate a ceasefire in Ukraine without Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s input, and pressed Trump on the significance of offering a meeting to Putin.

Ahead of the meeting, Putin praised Trump for making “quite vigorous and sincere efforts” toward ending the conflict in Ukraine and “to create long-term conditions of peace between our countries and in Europe, and in the world as a whole.”

A fake story from a Brazilian fugitive accusing former Trump Attorney General Bill Barr of colluding with Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis and Armstrong Williams to indict President Trump swept through MAGA world this summer. 

How did a lie from a Brazilian woman being actively pursued by the FBI dominate the right’s media landscape and turn them against a longtime Trump ally? The Bulwark reports that it originated from Patrícia Lélis, a woman who was indicted last year in a wire fraud case after stealing around $700,000 and using it for her house’s down payment and credit card bill, among other things. She fled the country before serving any time and was last seen in Mexico.  

In Brazil, Lélis is infamous for a false rape accusation against Brazilian pastor and politician Marco Feliciano, which led to her being arrested, with Brazilian law enforcement ultimately releasing a report that claimed she had a mental condition that caused her to lie impulsively. In 2021, she claimed that then-President Jair Bolsonaro’s son Eduardo threatened to kill her over text. Police determined she forged the messages and arrested her instead once again. She was kicked out of the Brazilian Workers’ Party for being extremely transphobic, and even made posts falsely claiming she was pregnant. 

Lélis is essentially a professional international charlatan. How did she become the point person for the accusations of treason against Barr? 

It’s all Armstrong Williams’s fault. The Black conservative talking head hired Lélis without verifying anything about her background or history, as she claimed to be an immigration lawyer to get the job with Williams. She worked for him for two years, 2021 to 2023, stealing money from his organization in the process.  

Lélis concocted a story based on her time working for Armstrong, in which she alleges that, while sitting in as a notetaker during meetings, she witnessed Armstrong, Barr, and Willis coordinating Trump’s prosecutions, which doesn’t make much sense given that Barr was not attorney general while Lélis was working for Armstrong. 

None of the conservative pundits who took up Lélis’s story seemed to care. And neither did Project Veritas, which featured Lélis multiple times as a brave whistleblower whose life was in danger as Barr was trying to silence her.  

“One thing that I understood very well is like Bill Barr and Armstrong and all the politicians too, they’re very focused like in how they go to stop Trump,” Lélis said in a Project Veritas article. 

Brazilians tried to warn Project Veritas. Now no one knows where Lélis is. Let this be  a lesson to at least google someone before you platform their allegations of plots against the president.