BLUFF CALLED: I only bused migrants to NYC because Eric Adams opened his big mouth — and lied, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott says.

Abbott wasn’t going to bus migrants to New York City. And then Eric Adams opened his big mouth.

That’s how the three-term Republican describes his 2022 decision to send 119,000 migrants from the Texas border to sanctuary cities across the country — including more than 45,000 to New York alone.

In an exclusive interview with The Post, Abbott explained that at first he was only sending migrant buses to Washington, DC, to make a point about the Biden-Harris administration’s failure to crack down on the massive surge of illegal crossings — and relieve some pressure on the border towns that were being overwhelmed.

Then, “out of nowhere,” Abbott said, “Mayor Adams started criticizing me for busing them to New York, which I was not doing. But he kept criticizing me.”

“I thought, ‘You know what? New York is a sanctuary city, if I’m going to get the criticism, I’m going to get the credit.’ So we started busing them to New York.”

Earlier: Sanctuary Cities Seethe as Illegal Immigrants Actually Arrive.

The surest sign that public policies are simply virtue signals is when the messages don’t cost anything. The easiest way to tell when that signal starts to fail is to watch politicians flounder as the costs start to rise and voters demand relief.

It was free—and meaningless—for progressive churches to post banners calling themselves “nuclear free zones” during the Reagan era. Their dwindling congregations loved it. It was free, after George Floyd‘s murder, to post woke catechism signs on your front lawn, proclaiming “In this house, we believe: Black Lives Matter, women’s rights are human rights, no human is illegal” and so on. Maybe the neighbors gave you high-fives. And for years it has been free for deep-blue cities to proclaim themselves “sanctuaries” for illegal immigrants. That’s changing now that voters want some sanctuary for themselves.

Changes like this happen when voters realize the old virtue signals actually entail serious costs—and that they will have to pay them. That is exactly what’s happening in New York City and Washington D.C. now that Texas governor Greg Abbott is sending those cities a few busloads of illegal immigrants from his state.

These progressive bastions were silent when the Biden administration flew planeloads of illegal immigrants to suburban airports in the middle of the night. TV coverage was prohibited, and the arrivals were secretly dispersed. Abbott’s buses, by contrast, arrive downtown greeted by local TV crews. Now you can hear the politicians screech.

As Jazz Shaw wrote: Sanctuary cities not enjoying actually being used as sanctuaries.

As Lipson points out, the reality of enacting various socialist and liberal policies is quite different than simply issuing press releases proclaiming your support for illegal migrants. Talking about being a sanctuary city carries no cost beyond perhaps a small budget for advertising time. Having hundreds of people suddenly showing up in your city with no resources or support networks, with most unable to even speak English carries very real and potentially significant costs.

But how do Bowser and Adams navigate these political waters? When they declare that the Republican governors are doing “something bad,” they are implicitly stating that having the migrants arrive in these sanctuaries is also “a bad thing.” But if you’re a sanctuary, why would accepting these people be a problem? That’s the equivalent of opening up a restaurant and then acting surprised and annoyed when people start walking in and trying to order food.

It was also the only for the media to cover the crisis-by-design that Biden-Harris created at America’s borders. If it was only a small Texas border town being absolutely overrun, there’s zero media coverage. Send them to the media capital of the planet, and the ink and pixels and video began to flow by the gallon.

The ghost of Saul Alinsky smiles: “Make opponents live up to their own book of rules. ‘You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity.’”