De Blasio impostor tricks newspaper into running anti-Mamdani quotes

[muriel_volestrangler]

1. First excuse from The Times turns out to be a lie - they contacted the wrong DeBlasio

"our reporter had been misled by an individual falsely claiming to be the former New York mayor."

https://www.semafor.com/article/10/29/2025/times-london-zohran-mamdani-new-york

Reality:

He is, instead, a 59-year-old Long Island wine importer named Bill DeBlasio, who merely responded to an email from a journalist seeking his views on Democrat Zohran Mamdani’s policies.
...
“I never once said I was the mayor. He never addressed me as the mayor,” DeBlasio told Semafor. “So I just gave him my opinion.”

The episode began earlier this week when a reporter for the quality British newspaper, Bevan Hurley, sent a polite email to an email address containing the full name belonging both to the wine seller and the two-term New York mayor, who spells “de” with a lowercase “d” and inserts a space between the two parts of his surname. (In DeBlasio’s view, “low-class Italians use a little d.“)
...
DeBlasio understood the situation. “I could have corrected him,” he said. Instead, he played along. He used ChatGPT to compose a response criticizing Mamdani’s tax plans, in particular, as unlikely to raise the requisite revenue.

https://www.semafor.com/article/10/29/2025/british-newspaper-spoke-to-the-wrong-deblasio-not-an-imposter