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De Blasio says not “time to look backwards” at his Wuhan coronavirus failures

De Blasio says not “time to look backwards” at his Wuhan coronavirus failures

At critical times, de Blasio and his key administrators advised New Yorkers to disregard warnings and to go to parades and festivals, and now New York City is the nation’s hotspot for infections.

https://youtu.be/_B9pRLPNffE

New York City mayor Bill de Blasio is apparently rethinking his numerous attacks on President Trump’s response to the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak.  After spending days bashing the president, de Blasio was confronted with his own response and the subsequent appearance of hypocrisy in blasting Trump.

On Sunday, de Blasio appeared on Jake Tapper’s State of the Union and changed course on finger-pointing, saying that no one should be looking at his, or anyone’s, past actions and statements regarding coronavirus.  Quite the turnaround.

Fox News reports:

With the Big Apple now the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak in the United States, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said Sunday that critics should not be “focusing” on “anything looking back on any level of government right now” — including his previous statements urging his constituents to go about their lives and not worry about the virus.

. . . . Confronted with his previous soundbites on CNN’s “State of the Union,” de Blasio initially downplayed the comments before ultimately acknowledging that the questions were “fair.”

“This is just about how we save lives going forward. Everyone was working with the information we had, and trying of course to avoid panic,” de Blasio began. “The bottom line is none of us have time to look backwards. I’m trying to figure out how we get through next Sunday, and what we do the week after that.”

When anchor Jake Tapper reminded the mayor that he has harshly criticized President Trump’s response to the crisis, de Blasio insisted that he had argued in real-time that coronavirus testing was insufficient.

At the same time, de Blasio continued: “There’s no time to go back over that; there’s only time to focus on getting through the next week and the week after that. You can ask all the questions you want. They’re fair. But I think the time to deal with these questions is after this war is over. Because literally here in New York City, it feels like a wartime environment.”

Watch the clip:

De Blasio spent weeks telling New Yorkers to carry on carrying on, and in one memorable moment was seen going to the gym at the YMCA in Brooklyn on March 16th. The move did not go over well, including among his own former staffers.

The New York Post reports:

Broadway is dark, the city’s 1.1 million public school students are home from school, and the Big Apple’s 27,000 restaurants will close their doors to diners Tuesday — but none of those warnings could keep Mayor Bill de Blasio from a trip to his favorite public gym in Brooklyn on Monday morning.

. . . . The Mayor’s actions today are inexcusable and reckless,” tweeted Rebecca Katz, a longtime de Blasio confidante.

“She right. It’s pathetic. Self-involved. Inexcusable,” another longtime adviser to the mayor, Jonathan Rosen, chimed in on Twitter.

“He went to the f–king gym? Jesus!” said one shocked ex-staffer.

Another former City Hall employee told The Post, “Every New Yorker’s regular routine has been put on hold. His should be, too. Get to work. Set an example. This is embarrassing.”
Paul Martinka

A third ex-mayoral staffer added, “I’m offended … horrified.

“Didn’t the CDC recommend no gatherings of 50 people or more? … Will he be counting the amount of people there and leaving if it’s over 49?

“If we’re supposed to be social distancing, then what does that even mean if he gets to play by his own rules? Leaders are supposed to set by example. What kind of example does this set?” the former worker said.

“Also, why is he at the gym and not hunkered down 24/7 working on this? It’s a pandemic, and people are dying. Stunning.

“How many people have to die before he stops getting chauffeured to the gym is my question. What’s the appropriate number of deaths before he finds it uncouth,” the staffer continued.

Tom Elliott, founder of Grabien media, has a great Twitter thread documenting the timeline of various statements by Democrat officials in New York City, all following de Blasio’s own downplaying of the potential impact of the coronavirus.

The National Review also did a detailed timeline of New York City officials’ response to the Wuhan coronavirus.

Memory-holing his own—and his administration’s—downplaying of the crisis while bashing Trump didn’t work, so it’s no wonder de Blasio now wants to move on and not “look backwards.”

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Comments

healthguyfsu | March 29, 2020 at 8:07 pm

Busted…get him, MSM. I’ll wait with bated breath.

JusticeDelivered | March 29, 2020 at 8:08 pm

“take the subway, go out, enjoy life”

And death, become the grim reaper. Is his attitude pure stupidity, or motivated by business profits?

I hate to say it, but he’s at least partially right. Look to the future, not the past.

The history of human civilization is us staggering from one crisis to the next. Sometimes we even cause the crises.

But people are smart. We’re very smart. If you doubt this, look up at the night sky. We’re so smart that we can do that and use what we see to infer the history and structure of the universe. That’s how smart we are.

So we’ll figure a way to get through this crisis. And the next one, too.

By almost any metric, life is stunningly good now. If you doubt this, look at the data that’s available on the Our World in Data web site or one of the many books on the topic. It takes a person irrationally fixated on one of our many problems to not see how good we have it now. And things are probably only going to get better.

So definitely look to the future instead of the past. There’s no reason at all to not be very optimistic about the future. It’s going to be better than we can easily imagine today.

But be sure to learn from your mistakes.

    I agree that the general principle of looking to the future and examining early mistakes after the crisis has passed is a good idea.

    The problem, as I tried to make clear in my post, is that this was decidedly not de Blasio’s initial response; he sought to politicize the coronavirus pandemic for his own and for his party’s political gain, to score points, to hurt the president during a national crisis. In fact, de Blasio repeatedly and relentlessly bashed Trump’s early response to the coronavirus (see the links I provide or just do a search of your own) while hoping the media wouldn’t call him out on his hypocrisy. They did.

    Only then, when called out for his partisan hackery, did he decide–clearly out of cynical, political self-preservation–to look forward. That’s the problem here, not the (correct) conclusion he was forced to reach after being a completely partisan tool.

      Colonel Travis in reply to Fuzzy Slippers. | March 29, 2020 at 11:46 pm

      100% truth

      di blasio is no leader. He’s no intellectual. He possesses no common sense. His political belief is communism, with all its attendant fascism. In other words, he can’t be trusted with anything – anything, except to act like a poisonous dumbass.

      He is of no use now, in the past, or in the future. In fact, his presence is a negative, to a smaller degree as pelosi’s, but he is worse than worthless.

      If we thought the election of PDJT made the swamp waters recede and expose the rot of democrat/GOPe treason and corruption, the COVIRUS is draining it completely.

      What he meant was if you’re looking back just blame DJT – not me

        David Lentz in reply to bandit. | March 30, 2020 at 10:05 am

        New York City is the domestic epicenter of the Corona virus and Mayor de Blasio has either ignored or abetted the pandemic. Mayor de Blasio is the Captain Queeg of the epidemic.

    Exiliado in reply to lwmarti. | March 29, 2020 at 11:26 pm

    Yeah, let’s look to the future, but why ignore the past?

    Why have a future with leaders that failed so horribly?

“I’m trying to figure out how we get through next Sunday, and what we do the week after that.”

Some questions are easily answered. We do what the President advises, and not the mayor.

We do this by examining prior performance, and we find de Blasio’s lacking in merit. Not so obviously true of Trump’s. So “looking backwards” is very appropriate.

“subsequent appearance of hypocrisy”

You’re too kind to this asshole. His whole life is hypocrisy to become hide that fact he’s greedy as hell and wants to be filthy rich.
Look at the lifestyle of taking a limo not to his nearest gym but the YMCA miles away.

I legitimately think they’re going to sacrifice De Blasio on the altar of President Cuomo.

He’s an idiot that not even Democrats like, and he’s pretty demonstratably incompetent.

    ronk in reply to Olinser. | March 29, 2020 at 9:29 pm

    that might be true but Cuomo has his own problems, like giving briefing about the lack of supplies with a pile of supplies behind him, holding ventilators in reserve when people need them now, they would make for good political commercials for his opponents

      notamemberofanyorganizedpolicital in reply to ronk. | March 30, 2020 at 4:05 pm

      Goober Cumin (the stinky spice)
      makes Lizzie Warren
      look like a saint!

      ‘Nuff Said!

I wonder why this baffoon’s presidential campaign didn’t take off? The stupid is strong with this one.

I try to up-vote your comments, but it doesn’t work. I show to be logged in. Having problems with the comments?

Among the two biggest of malignant morons in America, one each of mayor of new york and los angeles.

It’s unbelievable.

What a maroon.

Now they want to take our 1st Amend. rights away. Hmmm, something is brewing here. I wish some one could sue the help out of them.

    rdmdawg in reply to MarkSmith. | March 30, 2020 at 3:44 am

    Well, they’ve infringed on 2nd amendment rights for New Yorkers for decades now, and nobody has said anything, time for them to infringe on your other rights too I guess.

Leftists are notoriously “foward-looking” back.

“time to look backwards”

It depends on how you qualify “progress” (i.e. monotonic).

    drednicolson in reply to n.n. | March 30, 2020 at 4:23 am

    When you’re about to go over the cliff, the direction of progress is backwards.

Pelosi is doing the same thing as De Blasio. When does the Propagandist media call her out for her hypocrisy?

Buffoon.

SeekingRationalThought | March 30, 2020 at 9:03 am

In this case, the only way forward is to reject De Blasio. His policies lead to illness and death and will do so again if he can convince others to ignore his hideous record. It is not looking backwards to learn from our mistakes and apply that knowledge to the future.

Democrat statement enter in this box: “De Blasio says not “time to look backwards” at his Wuhan coronavirus failures”

Real meaning exported: I fucked up and will look bad. Ignore things I said so I can get reelected.

“We need to be going up, not down. Forward, not backward and spinning! Always spinning! —-Kang, “The Simpsons”

Apparently in DeBlasio’s New York, the buck stops … er, someplace or other, but certainly not on the mayor’s desk.

Yet most citizens understand that elected officials are and remain accountable to the electorate. As mayor, DeBlasio has both formal authority to get things done, and informal “speaking as your mayor” moral authority. and if he’s failed to use these effectively then he should be held accountable for the results.

Of course he’s not responsible for not acting on information he could not possibly have had at the time, BUT, he can and should be held accountable if/when he used poor judgement based on what was known at the time.

Especially if that poor judgement was used to obtain petty political advantage. And unquestionably if that poor judgement may have caused substantial increases in human suffering and mortality.

Is it really asking so much to expect the mayor of a city that has an extraordinarily high population density, and which long ago became dependent on its extensive but over-a-century-old subway, to understand that his city just might be exquisitely vulnerable a highly contagious disease?

I wonder if chuck todd will ask him if he has blood on his hands.

Typical Democrat “MOVE ON” strategy. “Pay no attention to that resumé behind the curtain.”

Mayor Deblasio: Trump’s mistakes are unforgivable – but you really shouldn’t look back on my mistakes, you should look forward to the future.