Former New York City Mayor Eric Adams is going viral after a heated airport confrontation that apparently ended with him berating a heckler.
The tense exchange, reportedly filmed while passengers were getting off a flight in Dallas, was captured on video and posted to Reddit on Tuesday (Jan. 13).
The clip doesn’t show what sparked the argument, but it does show Adams going back-and-forth with a masked passenger who appeared to be provoking him.
At one point in the video, the woman can be heard saying, “Eric Adams, please punch me in the face. I would like if you punched me in the face.”
Adams fired back, “Go fuck yourself… I’m not the mayor anymore.”
The confrontation escalated as Adams leaned toward the passenger on the skybridge and warned, “You’re gonna see the Brooklyn in me,” referencing his roots in Brooklyn's Brownsville neighborhood.
The woman then appeared to push past him as they continued walking.
The former mayor leaned into the attention that the video was getting on social media. After The New York Post shared an article about the confrontation on X, Adams retweeted the video with a one-word caption: “Exactly.”
Adams’ spokesman, Todd Shapiro, defended him, telling The New York Post that Adams was being harassed and that the circulating clip does not tell the full story.
“He’s a private citizen and was harassed,” Shapiro said, adding that the video was “selectively edited,” lacked important context, and didn’t accurately reflect what happened.
The airport altercation came just days after Adams publicly announced his next move: a new crypto coin with proceeds fighting antisemitism.
