British Times mistakenly quotes Long Island wine importer as former New York City mayor

Instead, a Times Of London journalist apparently emailed a Long Island wine importer who has the same name (spelled ever so slightly differently, “DeBlasio” vs. “de Blasio”). “I never once said I was the mayor. He never addressed me as the mayor. So I just gave him my opinion,” DeBlasio told Semafor (which conducted this interview “through his Ring doorbell in Huntington Station, Long Island, from his current location in Florida,” as if this story couldn’t get any more boggling). Instead of correcting the Times reporter, DeBlasio used ChatGPT to come up with a quote that reflected his own view that “the math” of Mamdani’s policies “doesn’t hold up under scrutiny, and the political hurdles are substantial.”

Instead, the story made it to print. Sources for Semafor say this is because of pressure for more critical Mamdani pieces, supposedly driven by Margi Conklin, the U.S. Director of Content at The Times and a veteran of The New York Post and The Free Press. Unfortunately, Mamdani mania led The Times down a wrong but very funny path. (Though one with real consequences: Mamdani’s political rival Andrew Cuomo boosted the false piece on social media to highlight opposition to Mamdani’s campaign.) The outlet stated it had removed the post “after discovering that our reporter had been misled by an individual falsely claiming to be the former New York mayor.” But the other DeBlasio justifiably assumed that the reporter cold emailing him would “check out” his lack of credentials. “It was all in good fun. I never thought it would make it to print,” he told Semafor.