When Faced With Doubt, Pick A Fight With The Press . . .

“‘O.K., that’s great guys,’ he said. ‘I’m done. Thank you.’ He strode away and got into a waiting S.U.V.”:

Mayor Bill de Blasio walked out on his own news conference on Thursday without answering any questions, irked that reporters were not asking what he wanted them to ask.

In an extraordinary test of wills with the City Hall press corps, Mr. de Blasio refused to respond to questions that might ordinarily be considered well within the bounds of what the mayor of New York City would be expected to address. He was asked about the murder of a black man who police said was stabbed to death in Manhattan by a white man who had come to the city to harm black people, and the arrest in Israel of a man accused of making a string of telephone threats against Jewish community centers and other sites in the United States.

The mayor had called reporters to a chilly block of East 56th Street to make a pitch about his proposal for a so-called mansion tax on the sale of apartments or houses of more than $2 million, to pay for rent relief for older New Yorkers. The plan would need approval by the state legislature and is seen as having little hope of success in a State Senate that has generally responded with hostility to both new taxes and the mayor’s initiatives.

Against the backdrop of a luxury high-rise (with a handwritten sign in one window reading, “De Blasio doesn’t care about the working middle class”), the mayor spoke about the tax over the din of construction, passing trucks and a heckler who shouted, “Everyone hates you, de Blasio!”

BNB? BRB –BDB

“But emails obtained by the Daily News make clear that City Hall cut off talks with Airbnb days after the mayor’s non-profit got the six-figure check”:

After City Hall had engaged in cordial talks with Airbnb for two months in 2015, a politically powerful opponent of the home-sharing website gave $200,000 to Mayor de Blasio’s now-defunct non-profit group, Campaign for One New York.

The cordiality quickly stopped.

Shortly after the donation, top aides to Deputy Mayor Alicia Glen broke off communications with Airbnb. And the shift came as the mayor began ratcheting up enforcement against so-called illegal hotels that use Airbnb to attract customers.

The sequence of events came to light in the Daily News ongoing investigation of de Blasio’s fundraising, and represents the closest timing to date between a big-dollar donation to CONY and mayoral action.

[. . .]

The donor, UniteHere, a national union affiliated with the union that squared off against Airbnb, the Hotel & Motel Trades Council, insisted the donation had nothing to do with opposition to the home-sharing company.

How The Limousine Liberal Gave Way To The Rise Of The Helicopter Progressive

Just a good look all around:

Mayor de Blasio shut down a Little League baseball game in a Harlem park for more than an hour in August so police could ready a field for his helicopter, The Post has learned.

The chopper landing was then abruptly canceled after an angry dad started griping to cops about the intrusion, threatening to post pictures of the mayoral interruption on social media, a source said.

The extended seventh-inning stretch got underway at Harlem River Park during an Aug. 9 Little League game when the NYPD cleared the diamond of two under-14 teams, one dad told The Post.

The cops “basically told everybody to get off the field,” the dad said.

[. . .]

A former cop familiar with the situation told The Post police “were not happy” about having to arrange for de Blasio’s park landing.

The mayor’s office refused to comment on the aborted chopper ride, instead referring questions to the NYPD.

“The security and transportation of the mayor are determined by the NYPD,” said Deputy Commissioner John Miller. “We do not discuss the specifics of security.”

That was the same canned statement the department issued less than two weeks ago after The Post reported de Blasio had been picked up by a chopper landed in a Prospect Park ballfield.

Not Just Annoying, “Extremely Annoying”

We finally learn something useful from the Podesta Wikileaks email trove:

The hacked emails from Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta call Mayor Bill de Blasio a “terrorist” for declining to endorse his former boss and refer to him as a “bit insufferable.”

[. . .]

When Clinton’s campaign was having issues with Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, Podesta wrote in June 2015 to top Clinton aide Huma Abedin that Garcetti should be added “to the BdB file.”

“Adding to the list! What is the deal with mayors these days,” Abedin replied.

Neera Tanden, president and CEO of the Center for American Progress, advised Podesta to ignore de Blasio’s Progressive Agenda Committee.

“Politically, we are not getting any pressure to join this from our end. I leave it to you guys to judge what that means for you. But I’m not sweating it,” Tanden said.

After de Blasio reported to Tanden, Podesta and Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook that he had praised Clinton during an appearance on “Morning Joe” and would “spend the next year and a half battling conservatives at every turn,” Tanden said she found the mayor to be annoying.

“I find him a bit insufferable. Sorry if I let my extreme annoyance show,” Tanden wrote to Podesta.

De Blasio joked Wednesday that he was “crushed” to hear about the emails.

“When you are nudging your friends to go farther sometimes people push back or find that unpleasant,” de Blasio said.

The mayor said he goes “back a long way” with Clinton and her inner circle.

Maybe Point The Finger At Cuomo For Blocking A Lane On The BQE To “Build” A New Kosciuszko Bridge?

It was a simple helicopter ride:

The grass of a baseball field in Prospect Park shuddered under the blades of a New York Police Department helicopter on Friday afternoon. Dust flew in the air. Soon, Mayor Bill de Blasio clambered aboard.

In a car, it might have taken 30 minutes or longer for him to make the roughly seven-mile drive from his old Brooklyn stamping grounds to an event in Queens.

By air, the trip — a fantasy of nearly every New Yorker ever caught in traffic on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway — was considerably shorter.

But the headache it caused Mr. de Blasio on Monday might not have been worth the trip, as a photograph and a video of the copter incongruously parked in the middle of a city park ricocheted around the internet, and reporters waited outside City Hall to ask him about it.

The attention to his flight presented a no-win situation for Mr. de Blasio, a Democrat who has been criticized for arriving late to events and now finds himself justifying his attempts to arrive on time.

All of which is to say, there must be a perfectly reasonable explanation for all of it:

Hizzoner, who continues to refuse to disclose what kept him so busy that he needed to take a taxpayer-funded whirlybird to Long Island City, was hanging out in business casual and strolling around his old Park Slope neighborhood on that Friday, Oct. 14, according to locals.

He had likely been at Bar Toto, the Italian eatery that often serves as his second office.

He’s there nearly every Friday — a day when his schedule usually gives him the afternoon off — making calls on his phone and catching up with his former neighbors that stop by, according to sources familiar with his schedule.

The restaurant is just three blocks from Prospect Park, and a six minute walk from where the helicopter took off during the evening rush-hour.

“He’s comfortable there,” said one source.

[A Brooklyn resident] said she saw the mayor around 3 p.m. in a white button down shirt with no jacket in the south end of the neighborhood walking in the direction of Bar Toto.

[. . .]

That 3 p.m. sighting helps fill in the gaps from the mayor’s radio appearance at 1:25 p.m. and his chopper ride around 6:30 p.m.

Workers at Bar Toto confirmed that he is a regular presence on Fridays but suddenly got amnesia when asked if he was there that particular Friday.