Transcript: Mayor de Blasio Appears Live on WNYC's Brian Lehrer Show

July 29, 2016

Hillary Clinton: Imagine, if you dare, imagine – imagine him in the Oval Office facing real crisis – a man you can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons.

Brian Lehrer: Another of the zingers Clinton got off on Trump last night. We’ll keep airing excerpts from the Clinton acceptance speech through the morning, and taking calls, and talking about them with various guests right now. We will make this part of our weekly Ask The Mayor segment as Mayor Bill de Blasio – back from speaking in the convention in Philly – joins us once again. Hi, Mr. Mayor. Welcome back to WNYC.

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Good morning, Brian.

Lehrer: And listeners, our Ask The Mayor lines are open at 2-1-2-4-3-3-WNYC for anything you want to ask the Mayor about the Democratic Convention – that would be a question for him – or anything else. 2-1-2-4-3-3-WNYC, 2-1-2-4-3-3-9-6-9-2, or tweet a question using the hashtag #AskTheMayor.

So, people may not remember that you were Clinton’s campaign manager in her run for the Senate from New York. Do you see an evolution in her as a candidate from the year 2000 to now?

Mayor: Oh, absolutely. I think she’s become a better candidate each time. I think there were moments in 2008, in that campaign, where she was exceptional and moments where she was not as strong as she needed to be. I think in this campaign she’s gotten much better. And [inaudible] also obviously in 2000. But what was striking last night, which a lot of folks asked me in the lead-up to it – how has she changed? I said one of the most evident changes is in 2000 she really had trouble as a first-time candidate asking people for their vote, asking them to be part of it. I think there was a – sort of a modesty about her that she did not feel it was comfortable to ask people to do something for her. But she has evolved so deeply – and you saw the speech was fantastic at this level – she’s made it about us. It’s not about her. It’s about what we have to do together so we could change the country.

And I thought she was very effective at that – at making clear she was asking everyone to join together in a collective effort. And I think she did that with real energy. So there’s – you know, one thing about Hillary Clinton as a human being is she is capable of tremendous growth. And this is one of the things I think a lot of people appreciate – [inaudible] are they capable of growth? And she is someone who is constantly capable of growth.

Lehrer: By the way, one correction of something that I said. I said you were back from speaking the convention in Philadelphia but you’re still in Philly, right?

Mayor: Yes, we had a very late night here in Philly, Brian –

Lehrer: You know, your voice sounds like it.

Mayor: Yes, the New York delegation decided we should celebrate the historic moment of a woman being nominated for the first time in a major party and the evolution of our country by staying out very, very late together. So, the New York delegation showed great solidarity. And there was a lot of beer involved as well.

Lehrer: Let me play a clip of Secretary Clinton from the speech last night, and get your thoughts about it.

Hillary Clinton: The truth is, through all these years of public service, the service part has always come easier to me than the public part. I get it that some people just don’t know what to make of me.

Lehrer: And that’s to the point that you were just making. Were you embattling that same, “people don’t know what to make of me” problem when she was running for Senate in 2000?

Mayor: Well, we were battling both those challenges that – again, she said it very powerfully in one of the forums – it wasn’t, sort of, one of the most prominent moments of the campaign, but there was an unguarded moment where she said, “Look, I’m not the natural politician my husband is or Barack Obama. This is kind of hard for me.” And I thought that was very honest and important to say. I thought it was important to say what she said last night. You know, I thought she did a better job and her team did a better job last night of portraying that this is a human being who is very devoted largely for faith reasons, but obviously for ideological reasons as well – very devoted to public service, has had an ambivalent relationship with being the front person and being the voice – still grappling with that. I certainly saw it as her campaign manager. A very classic thing you hear about Hillary from people including many critics is the moment they spend time with her personally, they change their tune quickly. They say what a warm person, what an embracing person, how considerate she is. And that’s all very true.

Some people communicate their human warmth really well in a public space, and Bill Clinton was a great example of that of course. And it’s an interesting thing that this – this is her personal makeup. And I actually think it’s authentic. I think it’s – the truth about her is, she’s going to be, I’m convinced, an outstanding president. I thought Barack Obama said something that needed to be said very clearly – no one has ever been more qualified, who has run for president. No one’s ever been more ready to walk in on the job and be able to perform it.

But I think, you know, this is one part of Hillary that is – that she’s [inaudible] said in the video last night, she’s the work horse not the show horse – that’s her persona.

Lehrer: [Inaudible] in Flushing, you’re on WNYC with Mayor de Blasio. Hello –

Question: Good morning, Mayor. Good morning, Brian. First, I want to ask a private question – will the Mayor – ready if he gets nomination – to work on his cabinet? And let me ask – let me tell him, also, one very important thing. I followed him in [inaudible] on the convention floor – why he should be at that time slot whereas the former Mayor got primetime. It should be, for us, he has to speak on that time slot – because I [inaudible] Mayor Bloomberg. But the way he put himself in that position and for the first time, he was really insulting someone – really was very – my respect for him gets very low. But I want the Mayor to tell me – I am suspicious also [inaudible] going to work for her cabinet – can you please tell us if you will or will not?

Mayor: No. That’s really easy. No. I think the world of Hillary Clinton. I want her to be president. I’m going to very hard for her to become our president, and then look forward to working with her as Mayor of New York City. The thing I can tell you – and I’ve spent some time working in Washington, and I respect people who do that – but I am convinced there’s so much that we are getting done here in New York City, and so much more we need to get done. And I’ll be running for re-election very vigorously. And we have a bold agenda that we want to achieve here in New York City. I had a great experience yesterday with mayors from around the country. We did a panel discussion on income inequality, and every one of us was talking about what we were doing to address it. And I feel such inspiration from my fellow mayors. You know, with all due respect to the work in Washington, what mayors do is the most urgent, the most immediate change – and that’s what I want to keep doing.

You know on the time slot – I just don’t worry about that partly because I used to be a campaign manager, as Brian indicated. It made sense for Michael Bloomberg to have a featured speech. You know, in effect, it is – if you’ll forgive the phrase – it’s man-bites-dog. It’s the counter-intuitive of a guy who clearly was a Republican and a businessperson, and thought about running for president himself, to come out for Hillary Clinton. That’s an important story to tell the people of the United States. Some who has known Hillary for, you know, 20 years or so, and someone who was her campaign manager once-upon-a-time supporting her, that’s not exactly breaking news. So, I’m very comfortable with it.

Lehrer: You know the Times has an article about you today with the premise that you began the campaign season as a more prominent figure nationally than you ended – and that’s why you got that time slot. And here’s my question about that – I’ve wondered if after withholding your endorsement of Clinton, waiting for some progressive policies, you gave it up too soon when she had a little burst in the polls last fall, even before the first primary, unlike, say, Elizabeth Warren, squandering some of your progressive influence. Because people were saying for a while there, the progressive wing of the Democratic Party for the modern era, it’s Bernie Sanders, it’s Elizabeth Warren, it’s Bill de Blasio. And then after you endorsed Clinton that early they stopped saying Bill de Blasio.

Mayor: I don’t, first of all, know that’s the whole picture, Brian. And I also, again, don’t get lost in that. My colleagues – I am honored to have a real connection to both Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders in terms of how we’re all trying to change the country, and look forward to working closely with them. Look, they’re U.S. Senators. They’re in a different place – a prominent national place. And Bernie’s done something that really changed – I think, is the core of the answer to your question. Bernie changes the entire equation by building a moment that no one foresaw. I literally was thinking about this the other day. When Bernie announced his candidacy – I literally don’t know a single human being who predicted that his movement would grow the way it did.

So, this is a kind of shocking concept that I want to offer you. In this work we do – and I’m saying this as a progressive and someone that did a lot of political and community organizing – really it’s not supposed to be about us or our egos or where we are in the headlines. It’s supposed to be whether we get the progressive change we’re looking for. The Bernie movement changed the equation and pushed the whole party where it needed to be – to the left and to a more progressive place.

And I’m thrilled. And I don’t care what gets us there. If it hadn’t happened, I suspect, a lot of the rest of us would have had to push harder and been more prominent. But I am thrilled with the outcome. And, Chirlane and I sat down with Bernie and Jane a few days ago and said look, we want to do everything and anything we can to build the issues movement that now has to grow. We have to defeat the trade deal – TPP. We have a lot of work to do to take all of the improvements of the Democratic platform that Bernie achieved, to his credit, on top of everything that Hillary had in her platform – which was already the most progressive of anybody who could be president in decades – we’ve got to actually get that done.

So, to me this is an ensemble, this is a collective. I want to play whatever productive role I can within that.

Lehrer: Alright. You ready to get back to the nitty-gritty of being mayor of a big urban center?

Mayor: I’ve been doing it every day all along. This is a job that never goes away. It doesn’t matter what town you’re in or what convention you’re at. We’ve been doing the work every day at the same time.

Lehrer: So, Dee in Queens. You’re on WNYC with the Mayor. Hi, Dee.

Question: Hi. Thank you very much for taking my call. Hello, Mayor de Blasio. I’m a little nervous but I’m very disappointed with the services of the Department of Homeless Services. The individuals that work there, the program administrators, the program analysts that are supposed to be working with the clients in these non-profits are very unresponsive to the clients. They are not helpful. They’re very difficult to contact. I’ve contacted them quite a few times. They’ve hung up the phone on me. I’m only trying to help a family who’s in a family shelter. And they moved the family from a mold-infested family shelter to a bug-bed infested family shelter. That is very – it’s just horrible how these individuals with children are treated. There’s a family right now – the apartment that they gave them, the children are all scratching and itching, completely covered with bug bites.

Lehrer: Dee, what could the Mayor do for you and for the family, very concretely?

Question: I would like for the program administrators, the program analysts, individuals that are working for the Department of Homeless Services to send out an investigator, do something to rectify those apartments. Those non-profits who are getting a lot of money, they need to do their job and investigate the apartments that they put these individuals in.

Lehrer: Mr. Mayor, talk to Dee.

Mayor: I think Dee is raising a very important point. Dee, thank you for this call, and I appreciate your outrage. I feel it too, especially when you mention children being put in unacceptable situations. I’m a parent. I take that very, very personally. So, what I’m going to do is this. Dee, I’d like you to, when you get off the line, make sure you share your information with the folks from WNYC who will pass on to us – and Brian, I want to emphasize, we really want to get those individual cases passed on to us so we can fix them.

But on the bigger front, we have an absolute obligation in this city to shelter anyone who needs shelter. And that’s almost 58,000 people right now in New York City. We also – and that’s a lot more than it was a decade or two ago. We have constantly tried to build up our shelter capacity to be able to make sure that every single night we can put a roof over someone’s head. Some of the places that the City’s relied on for a long time are just not acceptable. And we’re going to get out of those [inaudible] called the cluster apartments. But it’s going to take time because if you think about it at the same time as we want to leave some of these facilities behind, we have to have a place for people each night. It’s quite a catch-22. But our goal is simple – get out of anything that we don’t regard as appropriate housing, reduce the number of folks in shelters steadily through anti-eviction legal services and through rental subsidies to keep people in their apartment. Evictions by the way – down 24 percent. This is a very powerful point. Evictions are down 24 percent in the last two years because we’ve been giving people lawyers for free.

And Brian, you’ve heard me say it before and I’ll say it again – if you, if anyone listening, is facing an illegal eviction or harassment by their landlord – call 3-1-1. And if we can bring a legal case to stop it, we will give you a lawyer for free. All you have to do is call 3-1-1. So those kinds of initiatives are reducing the number of people seeking shelter. We actually have been able to keep the shelter obligations stable for the first time in a long time and not see it continually increase. But I appreciate Dee’s call because I don’t want to see any child in a situation like that.

Lehrer: And Dee, we are going to take your information off the air. Our producer is going to pick up right now, and we’ll make sure that the Mayor’s Office follows up. Tony in Park Slope – you’re on WNYC with Mayor de Blasio. Hello.

Question: Hi, Brian. Hi, Mr. Mayor. I have a simple question which is just why don’t we have more NYPD officers on bicycles? I was standing with an officer in Prospect Park, Brooklyn the other day during a symphony concert. He is part of the 58th Precinct and he said he loves it. And I just know with all the important efforts with Vision Zero – trying to reduce traffic fatalities and just having safe, walkable streets. I was wondering – why don’t we see more cops on bikes in the city and other precincts? 

Mayor: Tony, you are – you’re ahead of the curve. In fact, Commissioner Bratton and I – when we got together Monday and we talked about some of the things that we’re doing to increase officer safety – the new helmets that we’re making available, and vests to stop the highest caliber ammunition, etcetera – we also talked about the growing use of bikes by the NYPD. We have hundreds more bikes that are coming in soon that we think are great for everything – for the work that police do with communities. It’s a great element of neighborhood policing, which we’re going to be seeing that strategy take effect more and more because we want police close to the ground, connected to the community – not in a squad car and disconnected, but really building relationships. It’s great for dealing with situations where police need to be really agile and mobile. It’s great for dealing with demonstrations and protests, which nowadays move quite fluidly, and we want our police to stay close by the protesters and be able to protect everyone involved. So we’re going to be doing a lot more with bicycles and a lot more are on the way.

Lehrer: Thank you for your call, Tony. And let me use that as a segue to catch up with you on a few city things that have been going on while this show has been obsessed with the conventions. And we didn’t get a chance to talk to you last week because even the Mayor of New York City deserves a vacation, and so I hope you enjoyed your time in Italy.

Mayor: That was very genteel. I appreciate that Brian.

Lehrer: So one of the things is that Commissioner Bratton has said that he’ll leave after one term. So if you’re elected again next year, what will you look for in the next police commissioner?

Mayor: Well, look – I’ve said I think it’s important to not get too far into that discussion when there is plenty of work ahead to be done. But the broad point is this – Bill Bratton has done an outstanding job. He really has. And he and I feel tremendous strategic unity on the kind of things we have do – particularly neighborhood policing; retraining the entire police force on things like de-escalation and conflict situations; implicit bias training, which we’re going to be starting soon, helping all of our officers to understand we as human beings have biases. We have to address them and not allow them to infect the work we do. So, so much of what he believes in, I believe in has allowed us to simultaneously drive down shootings, drive down crime, and improve police-community relations at the same time. So I’m looking in the future – if the people choose me for a second term – to continue that progress and I’ll look for obviously the person I think can best epitomize what I’ve seen in Bill Bratton.

Lehrer: Another thing that’s been going on while we’ve been obsessing on the convention here – you had some sharp words for the MTA earlier this week when you criticized them for announcing they were shutting down the L train between Brooklyn and Manhattan for 18 months. Don’t worry, folks – it doesn’t begin until 2019, but worry then. So before they had fully iterated an alternative service plan, but some of this would fall on you, right? Like some elected officials are now calling on 14th Street to close to private traffic during the shutdown, so buses could move more freely, but that’s not something the MTA has jurisdiction on. So what’s the City’s role in making sure that this is the minimally disruptive – as minimally disruptive as possible?

Mayor: Great question. And of course we will very energetically be dealing with the MTA, both privately and publicly, on these issues to get fairness for everyone who takes the L train. Yes, I am concerned. The MTA – I like to remind all New Yorkers – is run by the State of New York, not the City. And therefore, we see the MTA do things sometimes that are not pleasing to us as New Yorkers. So, this decision – although I’m sure it has a practical, underlying rationale – announcing it without a plan to deal with the impact is troubling to me. It’s a long time. And we’re certainly going to push hard to see – does it really have to be so long? Is there any other way to go about this? The primary responsibility for mitigation, for providing alternatives – falls on the State and the MTA – and obviously buses along the route would be the most obvious. But it’s a tough situation. It’s a very crowded line. It’s an area where it’s hard to get buses around compared to some others. So we’re going to look at different things we can do. One good news piece of the equation – our new Citywide Ferry Service starts next year. And that’s going to actually – because it happened to hit some of those areas to begin with where the L train serves – that’s going to be a helpful piece of the equation. So that was happening anyway. We might adjust schedules – one thing or another – in light of the L train dynamic. The other point about 14th Street – it’s a big decision. We’ve only just begun to think about what we might do. It’s not one that on first blush sounds to me easy, given how important 14th Street is. But we’ll look at everything and anything we can do. Most important point here is that we have to push the MTA to confirm – do they really need to do it that way? Are there better alternatives? And what are they going to do to maximize the alternatives that they can provide – buses and other things they can provide – for those riders?

Lehrer: And while we’ve been obsessing here on the conventions, there have been some developments in the various investigations. And the one I’ll ask you about is on allowing Rivington House to convert from a non-profit nursing home to luxury condos. You’ve said the people involved deceived the City into approving it. But your Department of Investigation now finds that your First Deputy Mayor Anthony Shorris was notified about the plan on multiple occasions, knew about it early in the process, and on one occasion sent you an email about it. Do you still have confidence in Anthony Shorris –

Mayor: I have tremendous –

Lehrer: – as First Deputy Mayor after that report?

Mayor: Yes – total confidence in Tony Shorris. I think that with all due respect to the way you framed that – I don’t think that’s what the report says. The fact is there was tremendous lack of communication internally about what the ramifications of the decision was. As I said, it never came to me. Let’s just be really clear – it should not have happened. It was a mistake. It does not reflect my values. I would never have approved a senior facility turned into luxury housing. It just does not make sense. This was a problem of lack of coordination – left hand, right hand – and a broken policy that goes back 25 years that we should have caught, but bluntly was a fairly obscure administrative policy. No, I don’t think that reflects what happened internally. I think given the volume of activity in City Hall – and as First Deputy Mayor, Tony Shorris probably has the most on his plate of anyone who works for me and he has to – he plays a crucial role with police issues, education issues, transportation issues. A deed restriction change – you can understand – might not be on the top of anyone’s list on a given day. But what we’ve done most importantly is we’ve made the reforms that will make sure that never happens again. No such thing can happen again because we’ve put a huge number of checks and balances in place. We’ve totally changed what we value in the process. Under the previous policy which was used in the Giuliani and Bloomberg administrations, the big value was put on selling off the deed restriction change to get money for the City – not what was the land-use ramification, what was the community ramification, what would it mean for the people of the community. We’ve turned that on its head. We’ve said from now on, the first question will be what does it mean in terms of things like affordable housing. The community is going to play a vibrant role. And no change on a deed restriction when it goes through our DCAS agency, Citywide Administrative Services – no change can be made without my personal signature.

Lehrer: This one involved a $16 million payday to the City.

Mayor: Correct.

Lehrer: Could that really have gone through Anthony Shorris’s desk multiple times without him focusing on it because it was too a small a thing and getting what it was?

Mayor: Again, here’s the simple way of saying it – in the context of an $82 billion budget, in the context of all the issues we deal with everyday – $16 million. I care deeply about $16 million, as do the taxpayers. But compared to everything else we deal with, it is on the smaller side of the equation. That’s not the point though. I think when you have folks downstream at an agency saying all of this checks out, it’s by the normal process, it’s all been vetted legally, it’s appropriate – in the work we do in government – of course we lean on our colleagues up and down the line to help confirm that things are being done right. What was wrong here Brian – it’s the policy itself. So in other words, all the boxes were checked, all the legalities were there. But the policy itself was broken because the policy did not have a check and balance that would have stopped the developer from saying one thing and then doing another. There was no accountability mechanism. And that’s something else we’re adding into the new policy – a legally binding stipulation – if we played the whole thing over again under our policy. If someone who was seeking a deed restriction change said, ‘I’m going to keep this a nursing home, don’t you worry.’ And then they moved to sell it off, we would have had instant legal grounds to stop them dead in their tracks and to penalize them. That’s what we need going forward.

Lehrer: One other thing on this is that the report says the city’s lawyer, Zachary Carter, your Corporation Counsel, initially resisted the investigators’ request for access to your hard drive with evidence related to the case. What do you say to the perception of an attempt to hide something?

Mayor: I think it’s ridiculous. Zachary Carter first of all – former U.S. Attorney, a highly-respected figure in law enforcement. He provided thousands and thousands of pages about this issue. He is also the top lawyer for this city and he has to decide what he thinks is appropriate and what’s not appropriate, because everything we do obviously has [inaudible] impact so I said look if this all fits an investigation, we are going to give it to you freely. There are some other areas, we don’t think do as much. But they’ve been able to work through – Law Department and DOI have been able to work things through. Come up with some areas that they agree, additional information can be provided. But here is what it comes down to, again, I will say it one more time: a mistake was made, it will not be made again. We put a series of reforms in place. And nothing, by the way looking at that DOI report, nothing [inaudible] happened. This was not that some individual did something for their own gain. Something stupid happened. Something happened that should not have happened. And it won’t again and I guarantee that.

Lehrer: So you’re focusing on what won’t happen in the future but one more follow-up, one of the things the Daily News is emphasizing is that they’re not sure if you support that Mr. Carter withheld a specific memo that they say stated early in the process that the nursing home owners were considering selling Rivington to condo developers that – that was one of the things that Zachary Carter withheld.

Mayor: That’s not true, Zachary Carter— you know, again, Brian respectfully— I feel like people take one article and start assuming it’s true without looking at the facts that we have put out publicly. Zach Carter put out publicly that some of the very memos that were claimed to have been “withheld” had been provided to the Department of Investigation. He literally said, ‘here’s when we provided those memos in question, here’s the date.’ That was months ago in this case. So this is becoming the telephone game. We’ve provided the information; it’s quite clear what happened here. We’ve explained it. It’s a mistake. It’s not acceptable, it won’t happen again. But, no I’m sorry some reporters have just blatantly ignored the fact that we laid out exactly when we gave those memos and we had every reason to be transparent about those memos. Because they portray how the mistakes in the decision process happened and we’ve been open with those mistakes.

Lehrer: All right. Speaking of a telephone game, do you have time to wrap up with one more caller about the convention? Ron in East Brunswick you are on WNYC with Mayor de Blasio.

Question: Hi there, thank you very much. I will try to get this out as quickly as I can. With choice of VP, I know this doesn’t generally happen where two candidates vying in a primary will work together, but if you want to win and you’re Hillary, why wouldn’t you offer Bernie the VP? I am not saying that he would take it but now you’ve got all those votes and there’s no way Trump would overcome that, right? Did you ever hear any talk of that? Is that just politically naïve of me to even suggest?

Mayor: No it’s a totally fair question and I think it comes down to the sense that everybody, when they choose their second – and by the way in New York State we saw this can really mean something. You know Elliot Spitzer out of nowhere suddenly gone; David Paterson has to take over. This choice, especially in the modern age with the presidency of the United States, has massive ramifications and the number one obligation of a presidential candidate is you have to choose someone you figure, you know you feel comfortable they can take over the next day – the whole job. And I think Tim Kaine because he was a governor, because he has been a Senator, he has focused on international relations issues – I think Hillary felt that real comfort in him. And again, I think your point is well taken. I’m not sure Bernie would have wanted it anyway but in this case the most important thing was to choose the person that she felt most comfortable with doing the job of the presidency, God forbid she could not do it. I think to your other point –the Bernie movement, I believe the Bernie movement is crucial to the future of this country. I think it is very helpful that the president, President Obama, and Hillary reference in their speeches that this movement not only needs to be honored, it must be part of everything the Democratic Party does going forward and that especially as Bernie said in the speech, the choice of president is in one piece of the equation, the movement to actually achieve these progressive changes under our platform is the much bigger piece of the equation. And I look forward to working with him to actually achieve these things.

Lehrer: Mr. Mayor, as always, thank you very much. I will talk to you next week.

Mayor: Take care. Bye.