Mayor de Blasio and President-elect Donald Trump are more alike than either wants to hear — and the mayor’s latest press conference shows it.
On Tuesday, de Blasio wouldn’t admit that his refusal to take a question from The Post’s Yoav Gonen back in October at all resembled Trump’s refusal this month to call on CNN’s Jim Acosta. It’s “apples and oranges,” he insisted.
“I was very explicit that when I thought a particular outlet was trying to run a particular strategic play that I was going to call it out,” de Blasio said.
But back then the mayor said he was angry over a Post exposé of how he’d parked 264 political operatives on the public payroll as “special assistants” at a cost to the taxpayers of $18.7 million. Specifically, he was mad at the supposed insult to one of those “assistants” — saying he had “no use for a right-wing rag that tries to attack public servants.”
Which was why he wouldn’t take Gonen’s question about . . . teacher pensions.
Tuesday, he laid down the general rule that supposedly distinguishes him from Trump: “To say to outlets wholesale that they can’t be in the room or they can’t ask questions is ridiculous. I’ve never practiced that, and it’s absolutely unacceptable.”
Yet Trump doesn’t seem to have a blanket ban on CNN, either. He shut down Acosta the day after CNN ran a story the president-elect deemed outrageous — a report that falsely implied US agencies believed the Putin crew has real dirt on Trump.
“I’m not going to give you a question,” the prez-elect said, and: “You are fake news.” He also called CNN a “terrible organization.”
In refusing to call on Gonen, de Blasio said, “I’m calling on real media outlets.” Within a day, he told The New York Times it was time to “have this conversation” about The Post, which is “a very negative presence in our city” and not a “real” media organization.
His Tuesday update complained of The Post’s “propagandistic efforts” serving our parent company’s “vast ideological agenda.”
It’s impossible to see anything but “apples and apples” here: Both men were angry over a particular story, and each within a day refused to take questions from that outlet, citing its hostile agenda (though Trump so far isn’t demanding a public “conversation” about CNN).
De Blasio on Tuesday also dodged a (non-Post) reporter’s query on the difference between “propaganda” and “fake news.”
Yes, plenty separates the two men. But each thinks very highly of himself, and wants to live in a bubble that brooks no hard questions — on which, they’re both out of luck.