On Wednesday’s broadcast of CNN’s “New Day,” New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) defended treating religious services differently from protests despite a court ruling that doing so was wrong by stating that “The protests were an entirely different reality,” and that comparing the protests to religious services is “really apples and oranges.”
De Blasio said, “We worked with the religious leadership of this city for months. Cardinal Dolan in the Catholic Church, and so many other religious leaders, who were in full agreement that it was not time to bring back religious services because of the danger it would cause to their congregants. The protests were an entirely different reality, a national phenomenon, that was not something that the government could just say, go away. It’s something that really came from the grassroots. And obviously, it had a profound meaning, and we’re all acting on the meaning of those protests. But it’s really apples and oranges. Our religious leaders were the first to say it was not time to bring back services. Now, we’re doing it carefully, smartly. So, I think that decision profoundly misses what the very religious institutions themselves were saying.”
(h/t Grabien)
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