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\n Photo: Pier Marco Tacca\/Getty Images\n <\/p>\n
With less than a week until the New York City mayoral election<\/a>, things are starting to get truly bizarre. On Tuesday, the Times of London published an article containing quotes that ostensibly came from former mayor Bill de Blasio<\/a>, in which he seemingly went back on his previous endorsement of Zohran Mamdani and criticized his campaign promises. According to the piece, de Blasio was starting to feel like \u201cthe math doesn\u2019t hold up.\u201d Quite the heel turn for ol\u2019 BdB! The problem is that he didn\u2019t actually say that, and the Times got duped by a de Blasio impersonator.<\/p>\n \u201cI want to be 100% clear: The story in the Times of London is entirely false and fabricated,\u201d de Blasio wrote in a social-media post<\/a>. \u201cIt was just brought to my attention and I\u2019m appalled. I never spoke to that reporter and never said those things. Those quotes aren\u2019t mine, don\u2019t reflect my views.\u201d<\/p>\n The article has since been deleted from the Times website, but was up long enough for the New York Post<\/a> to aggregate the quotes. \u201cIn my view, the math doesn\u2019t hold up under scrutiny, and the political hurdles are substantial,\u201d the fake de Blasio said. \u201cWhile the ambition is admirable, the cost estimates \u2014 reportedly exceeding $7 billion annually \u2014 rest on optimistic assumptions \u2026 about eliminating waste and raising revenue through new taxes.\u201d An Andrew Cuomo consultant latched on to these fake quotes, retweeting<\/a> the Post story and saying that Mamdani\u2019s campaign is all \u201cglitter and vibes.\u201d<\/p>\n In actuality, de Blasio remains steadfast in his backing of Mamdani. In another post<\/a>, he called the article a \u201cviolation of journalistic ethics\u201d and said \u201cthe truth is I fully support @ZohranKMamdani and believe his vision is both necessary and achievable.\u201d De Blasio officially endorsed Mamdani in September with an op-ed in the New York Daily News<\/a>, lauding his proposals for universal child care, free buses, and a rent freeze.<\/p>\n So how did this happen? The Times did not say exactly what went down, but told the New York Times <\/a>that its reporter had been \u201cmisled by an individual falsely claiming to be the former New York mayor.\u201d The paper also said it apologized to de Blasio. What does that mean, exactly? Was this as simple as someone nabbing the email DeBlasio61@yahoo.com<\/a> and using it to catfish reporters? Apparently, kinda.<\/p>\n