Live Update arrow right icon From the Liveblog of Wednesday, April 29, 2020

De Blasio: I apologize if funeral censure caused offense, but I have no regrets

29 April 2020, 6:52 pm Edit

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio issues an apology to those who were offended by his censure of the “Jewish community” regarding a mass Haredi funeral yesterday, but he says he stands by his decision to call out the “danger.”

“If in my passion and in my emotion I said something that in any way was hurtful, I’m sorry about that. that was not my intention,” de Blasio says at a press conference. “But I also want to be clear that I have no regrets about calling out this danger and saying that we’re going to deal with it very, very aggressively.”

“I have to say, I understand when people are mourning their real pain but we have to understand what it means to hold a large gathering in New York City today. It means unfortunately that some will be sick of this disease, some will spread the disease to others and as a result people will die.”

“I have a long deep relationship with the Orthodox community. I have a lot of love for the community. The notion that people would gather in large numbers and, even if they didn’t mean to, would spread a disease that kills other members of the community, is just unacceptable to me.

“We have to do something different and we have to break out of whatever we thought was normal in the past because these are not normal times,” he says.

“We’re not gonna be allowing gatherings of these kinds in any community. This was by far the largest gathering in New York  City of any community of any kind that I had heard of or seen directly or on video since the beginning of this crisis,” the mayor adds.

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