Former Mayor of New York Bill DeBlasio
© Olivia Sun/The Register via Imagn Content Services, LLC
(London) — Whoops! “The Times of London” says an article this week featuring quotes from former New York City Mayor Bill DeBlasio critical of current Democratic candidate Zohran Mamdani was false. The paper said a reporter had been tricked by a DeBlasio impersonator and removed the article two hours after it went up online.
DeBlasio, a fellow Democrat who has publicly praised Mamdani, told the “New York Times” he was astounded by the error and that he supports Mamdani’s policy goals. Only last month De Blasio had praised Mamdani, the 34-year-old democratic socialist, as “particularly perceptive, intelligent, open” and as recently as two weeks ago, the 64-year-old was posing awkwardly for photos in a “Hot girls for Zohran” T-shirt.
In one quote to the “Times of London”, the impersonator criticized Mamdani’s fiscal plans, ““In my view, the math doesn’t hold up under scrutiny, and the political hurdles are substantial.”
So, who was the mystery man the reporter spoke to? It WAS Bill DeBlasio who is president of La Vendemmia Wine Importers, based in Long Island, New York.
“I’m Bill DeBlasio. I’ve always been Bill DeBlasio,” the wine importer said. “I never once said I was the mayor. He never addressed me as the mayor,” he said, revealing a lack of journalistic integrity by The Times.
The Times, which has a small presence in the US, apologized and removed the article, saying it had been “misled by an individual falsely claiming to be the former New York mayor”.
