Brian Lera on WNYC, Mayor Adams held his weekly news conference yesterday, always does it on Tuesdays, expressing his pleasure in city priorities, including in the New York State budget that got

finalized over the weekend, including an extension of mayoral control of the public schools.

But much of the Q&A with reporters this time around centered on his reported pick of former

Giuliani chief staff, Randy Mastrow, for the position of

Corporation Council.

That means chief lawyer for the city of New York.

And also on the protests at the local universities over the Israel-Gaza War and the deployment

of the NYPD in some of those cases.

So to talk about what the mayor had to say about those issues primarily.

I'm joined now, as on most Wednesdays following these Tuesday news conferences by Liz Kim,

WNYC and Gothamist reporter covering the mayor.

Hi, Liz.

Good morning, Brian.

So starting with the campus protests and now encampments and the involvement of the NYPD

in shutting them down, the mayor pointed to what he called outside agitators in describing

the arrests at NYU.

Here is 30 seconds of what he said.

The number of bottles that were thrown, chairs thrown at at them people who peacefully protest for an issue

they're not throwing bottles in chairs and so we know that we have acknowledged and saw across the

country there are people who come have nothing to do with the issue and they want to aggravate.

Now, if those police officers didn't show a high level of discipline, this could have been an ugly situation.

Mayor Adams yesterday. So Liz, is the presence of outside actors widely reported?

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