Reporter emailed “William Deblasio” for comments on Mamdani. Turns out he emailed a completely different William Deblasio who lives on Long Island. Since the reporter never called William Deblasio “mayor” or asked if he was, Long Island William Deblasio just ran with it.
>DeBlasio understood the situation. “I could have corrected him,” he said. Instead, he played along. He used ChatGPT to compose a response criticizing Mamdani’s tax plans, in particular, as unlikely to raise the requisite revenue.
>“It was all in good fun. I never thought it would make it to print,” DeBlasio said. He assumed the reporter would “have all his people check it out.”
1 Comment
Second link
https://www.semafor.com/article/10/29/2025/british-newspaper-spoke-to-the-wrong-deblasio-not-an-imposter
TL:DR
Reporter emailed “William Deblasio” for comments on Mamdani. Turns out he emailed a completely different William Deblasio who lives on Long Island. Since the reporter never called William Deblasio “mayor” or asked if he was, Long Island William Deblasio just ran with it.
>DeBlasio understood the situation. “I could have corrected him,” he said. Instead, he played along. He used ChatGPT to compose a response criticizing Mamdani’s tax plans, in particular, as unlikely to raise the requisite revenue.
>“It was all in good fun. I never thought it would make it to print,” DeBlasio said. He assumed the reporter would “have all his people check it out.”