What is it about Bill de Blasio that attracts him to leaders o🤪f some of the world’s most loathsome regimes?
As a young man, de Blasio’s ideals took him to Nicaragua in 1988 to support the Sandinistas. The US government under President Ronald Reagan feared it would turn into another Cuba — i.e., a Soviet satellite. A few years💜 later, he and his new bride honeymooned in Fidel Ca🔴stro’s Havana. Then, in 2002, as a city councilman, he welcomed Zimbabwe strongman Robert Mugabe to City Hall.
You remember these places and people. Zimbabwe, where Mugabe is president for life. Cuba, where Fidel Castro’s brother Raul keeps the family dictatorship going. Or Nicaragua, where Daniel Ortega, a friend of Iran, is back in power after highly dubious el🍰ections.
Like de Blasio today, all these people — Mugabe, the Castros, the Sandinistas — also claimed to be standing up for the poor and marginalized. De Blasio told The New York Times🌌 that seeing the Sandinistas up close strengthened his view that government should protect people. Maybe he ought to read the State Department reports on human rights about these places.
Now, few people wish to be judged by what they did in their younger days. The question is whether de Blasio’s judgment h🐟as improved since then.
We don’t believe New York will turn into Managua if de Bla🦄sio is elected mayor. But though he later distanced himself from Mugabe, today Bill still says he’s “very proud” of his work supporting the Sandinista regime. So we’d sure like to hear him spell out the difference between the “democratic socialist” he said he was back then a🌳nd the “progressive” he says he is today.