De Blasio blames media for his troubles
New York Mayor de Blasio revealed his true colors yesterday in a press conference, blaming the media for diving New Yorkers, by reporting on misbehavior of demonstrators. Ignoring his own casting of aspersions on the cops, ignoring the inflammatory rhetoric of his ally Al Sharpton, and ignoring his own failure to rebuke demonstrators who marched chanting, “What do we want? Dead Cops? When do we want it? Now!”, he fell back into the posture of a reflexive totalitarian, seemingly pining for the kind of servile media that Cuba’s regime enjoys. Hey mayor, bad behavior is what makes the news. Get used to it. And focus on your own responsibility. Read the transcript (video below) and see:
QUESTION: What do you make of these specific, as well as other protesters who were literally getting in cops faces and yelling murderers.
de BLASIO: We've talk about this so many times and I'm not going to talk about it again. And now the question now is, what are you guys going to do? What are you guys going to do? Are you going to keep dividing us? I'm not talking about every single one of you, but let's get real. Just in that question. 25,000 people marched down one of our streets a few days back, absolutely peaceful, no chants like that, peacefully calling for what they believed in as American citizens, and the NYPD protected them, and I told people at the time, I said it repeatedly, I got calls from all over this country with admiration for the NYPD for the way it protected people's democratic rights.
I heard from some of the protesters who appreciated the NYPD. I heard from NYPD officers and leaders who said they saw peaceful protests, respectful protests. What you managed to do is pull up the few who do not represent the majority, who are saying unacceptable things, who shouldn't be saying those things, and they -- some who actually physically attacked police officers, which I've said is absolutely unacceptable. We will prosecute them to the fullest. Everyone must participate in finding those individuals, providing information to police, intervening to stop them, alerting the police. I will keep saying this over and over, and the question is, will you tell the world about it? Because you all are part of this, too.
So, yes, there some bad people who say inappropriate things. There's some people who say hateful things. They have no place in these protests. They are not what I'm talking about. I am talking about, excuse me, I am talking about the vast majority of New Yorkers like the vast majority of Americans who believe in peaceful democratic process. I don't care where they are in the political spectrum. The vast majority of our citizens are good and decent people who do not say negative things, racist things, nasty things to police, threatening things to police.
The few who want conflict, attempt that, and unfortunately so many times you guys enable that. I don't see reports on the many decent, good people. I don't see reports on the everyday cops who do the exemplary thing and hold the line and show restraint and discipline no matter what invective is hurled at them.