Sometimes a story just springs off the screen and shouts, "You can't make this stuff up!" Listen to this statement from New York City Mayor Eric Adams:

NYC Mayor says illegal aliens could solve lifeguard shortage because they're 'excellent swimmers' pic.twitter.com/VwPmPLKob6

— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) May 14, 2024

Did you get that? Mayor Adams assumes that illegal aliens are good swimmers, perhaps because they had to swim to get here - isn't that, well, racist? Why didn't he just come right out and suggest that a certain portion of their clothing may contain more moisture due to that traversing of the Rio Grande?

The New York Post had a thing or two to say about this debacle.

Hizzoner dropped the comment after being asked during a City Hall briefing about lifeguard staffing at the city’s beaches and pools, which have increasingly had issues in recent years, ahead of Memorial Day. 

Going off on a tangent, Adams indicated that Gotham’s lifeguard shortages could easily be fixed if migrant work visas were being expedited for those jobs that needed to be filled quickly.  

“How do we have a large body of people that are in our city, our country, that are excellent swimmers and at the same time we need lifeguards — and the only obstacle is that we won’t give them the right to work to become a lifeguard,” the mayor said.

“That just doesn’t make sense.”

Well, at least he got that last sentence right. Nothing he said about this made any sense. Worse than that, it's aggressively stupid, not only in the racist sense but in the idea that we should trust the job of saving people from drowning to people whose very first act in the United States was to enter the country illegally.

It's baffling how this man, elected to run the city by the (presumably) taxpaying residents of New York, is this utterly clueless. There's just no good way to defend this statement. But maybe he can fill some other city employment shortages with some other illegal immigrants from other parts of the world, based on the criteria he has shown here. For example:

Immigrants from the Middle East could be bomb disposal experts because they're "good with explosives."

Immigrants from the United Kingdom could be put to work as dentists because they're "good at oral hygiene."

Immigrants from Ireland could be put to work in the city's liquor licensing office because they're "so familiar with alcoholic beverages."

Immigrants from Japan could be put to work in animal control because they're "good with city-destroying monsters."

Where will it all end?

People wonder what's gone wrong with the Big Apple over the last few years; when you go from de Blasio to this guy, you really are jumping from frying pan to fire. Mayor Adams is giving Joe Biden a run for his money when it comes to cluelessness. Maybe he could even find an illegal alien who is good at being a big-city mayor. That shouldn't be hard. In New York, after all, they already have the bar set pretty low.

See also:

Eric Adams Does 'Stunning Turnaround' on Sanctuary City Laws As Greg Abbott's Plan Comes to Fruition

Sad Trombone: Fate of New York City's 'RoboCop' Is Revealed in Another Spectacular Failure for Eric Adams