There’s nothing newsworthy about someone from Long Island disliking a progressive policy in New York City. Still, it made the headlines in The Times of London.
That UK paper interviewed Bill DeBlasio about the campaign of New York City mayoral hopeful Zohran Mamdani. In the interview, he criticized portions of Mamdani’s policy platform and the Murdoch-owned outlet ran a story saying that the former New York mayor had some issues with the upstart candidate. The only problem? DeBlasio is not former New York Mayor Bill de Blasio.
Semafor identified the man at the center of the reporting mix-up as a 59-year-old wine importer who had received an email from a Times reporter and decided to respond. DeBlasio told Semafor that he never claimed to be the former mayor and was surprised to see his comments printed under that assumption.
“It was all in good fun. I never thought it would make it to print,” he said in an interview conducted via his Ring doorbell in Long Island, saying that he thought the outlet would double-check his identity before publishing. DeBlasio said he crafted his responses using ChatGPT.
The resulting article, since deleted, featured DeBlasio criticizing Mamdani’s proposals as unrealistic. After publication, the real Mayor de Blasio issued a statement on X calling the piece “entirely false and fabricated.” Mayor de Blasio endorsed Mamdani in September.
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“I never spoke to that reporter and never said those things,” he wrote.
The Times of London later blamed the incident on an “individual falsely claiming to be the former New York mayor.” But the Long Island DeBlasio disputes that characterization.
“I never once said I was the mayor,” he said. “He never addressed me as the mayor.”
