Everyone thinks the governor of New York secretly trashed Bill de Blasio in a newspaper interview
The story in question was published in the Daily News on Wednesday evening. In it, a person who was only identified as a "top" Cuomo administration official was extensively quoted accusing de Blasio of bungling his relationship with the state government. De Blasio and Cuomo have an infamously tense relationship and the mayor did not achieve many of legislative goals on the state level this year, including those related to affordable housing and education.
"He is more politically oriented in terms of his approach ... and then he makes it almost impossible for him to achieve success," the anonymous Cuomo official said to the Daily News.
The interview was striking to many of the Albany reporters most familiar with Cuomo. The anonymous official spoke with one of Cuomo's most famous mannerisms: asking himself questions before answering them in order to reframe the issue at hand.
Underneath the teasing Thursday morning headline "Cuomo impersonator attacks mayor," Capital New York documented several reporters calling attention to the "eerily familiar" quotes in the Daily News interview:
Cuomo held an unrelated press conference on Thursday afternoon to tout the end of the state legislative session. When he was asked if he was the official criticizing de Blasio to the Daily News, he didn't deny it:
Many of the political reporters watching Cuomo's press conference - including Sally Goldenberg, Ryan Hutchins, Jimmy Vielkind, Liz Benjamin, Berth Fertig, and more - wrote on Twitter that they believed Cuomo had admitted he was the unnamed person quoted in the Daily News.
However, Cuomo's communications director, Melissa DeRosa, told Business Insider "nope" when asked if the governor had confirmed it was him.
For his part, when de Blasio was asked about the controversy, he reportedly declined to comment and said he was focusing on the policy issues at hand.