Flashback: When the Wall at De Blasio's Home Wasn't Enough, He Built a Massive Fence Behind It
If you were to take the current impasse over border wall funding back to political first principles, one of the most vital questions to act would be simply: Do walls work? Do they do what they’re supposed to do — namely, deter enough people to justify their existence?
This question is sometimes irrelevant to border wall opponents, who have other grounds for their objections. However, if pressed for an answer, most will say no. A wall won’t deter enough people, cartels will find ways around it, illegals can climb over it or tunnel under it — we’ve heard pretty much every justification under the sun to deny President Donald Trump the funding he’s seeking for a border wall.
Bill De Blasio, the far-left mayor of New York City, certainly doesn’t think a wall would be effective or would save us money.
“That $5 billion — now I’m hearing $7 billion — for the wall, I could tell you a lot of things we could in this city to help people, to rebuild our infrastructure, to get people health care, to improve our schools,” De Blasio said at a news conference last week before the president’s Oval Office address, according to the New York Metro. “That’s where our money should go to.”
He also didn’t buy that it could be a deterrent to terrorism.
“The other thing that’s really p***ing me off … you know, we are the number one terror target in the country,” De Blasio said. “I have spent five years talking to (Former NYPD) Commissioner Bratton, (Current NYPD) Commissioner O’Neill, the FBI, the Joint Terrorism Task Force about the threats we face. I cannot remember a single conversation where they said there’s a threat to New York City coming from the southern border.”
For a liberal like de Blasio, the fact that he hasn’t been apprised of a threat during his time in office apparently means it hasn’t happened in the past or — most importantly — couldn’t happen in the future.
That he reached this conclusion is also wholly unsurprising, since he’s called the wall “racist:”
On a day when @realDonaldTrump continued to push for his racist border wall, here’s what we did in New York City. https://t.co/HzZvDBXzHT
— Mayor Bill de Blasio (@NYCMayor) January 9, 2019
So he’s against walls on the macro level, believing the money could be better invested in his pet programs. On the micro level, however, he apparently believes they do their job quite nicely.
“Mayor Bill de Blasio, a self-declared progressive ‘man of the people,’ has erected a massive new ‘privacy fence’ to keep his constituents from looking in on Gracie Mansion,” the home of New York City’s mayor, the New York Post reported in 2014.
“The new fence — constructed just inside an existing red brick wall and a wrought-iron fence ringing the historic property — was actually dubbed a ‘privacy fence’ by de Blasio and first lady Chirlane McCray, sources told The Post.”
“He likes to sit out on the porch and he felt like people were getting too close to him. Some people would see him and yell, ‘Hi, Mr. Mayor!’” one source said.
“They weren’t being derogatory or nasty or anything.”
However, this was enough for Parks Department spokesman Phil Abramson to say the new fencing was erected “due to security concerns.”
Keep in mind, there was already a wall — de Blasio just didn’t think it was enough.
Funny, residents noted, even Michael Bloomberg — inarguably a higher-profile mayor than De Blasio is — didn’t see the need for it.
“I used to see Bloomberg here in the summer back when he was mayor. You could almost see right in. And that’s what I liked a lot about him; very transparent,” 40-year-old Jodi Dropkin, a local resident, told the Post.
“The fence really turns me off because he always advertised himself as the ‘people’s mayor’ and (said) he would always make himself available. There’s something so shady about it,” she added.
“When he lived in Brooklyn, he was the type of guy who would hang outside and wave to everyone. Now he’s fencing himself in. I wouldn’t mind seeing him on the deck in his robe drinking coffee and waving to the people in the park,” Dropkin said.
“That would show me that he’s not paranoid or afraid to handle the public and issues. That’s the kind of approachable everyman he wanted everyone to think he was when he was getting elected.”
Campaign promises aside, one wonders how effective the fencing might be.
Could someone find a way to peek over it and disturb Mayor De Blasio? Possibly, although Gracie Mansion is certainly a contained area.
Could a terrorist or other lunatic determined to hurt the mayor manage to spot him through other means? Sure, but it would be markedly harder.
Does the wall do an effective job when it comes to what Mayor De Blasio intended it to do? Absolutely.
Walls at a micro level and at a macro level are different, but the concept is decidedly similar: They make it more difficult for bad actors to do bad things. The reasons for them may be different, but the basic principle is the same.
Western Journal has reached out to Mayor De Blasio’s office for comment on the fence. As of Monday morning, we have not received a response.
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