If only Democrat presidential candidate Bill de Blasio, the mayor of New York City, boasted poll numbers as high as the pitch of his voice.
Thanks to a cancelled flight, the 2020 contender was forced to modify his plans to speak Wednesday at an Iowa Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations’ conference.
In lieu of speaking to the attendees in person, his campaign team wound up live-streaming him onto a giant projector at the conference as he spoke from his home in New York City.
All would have ended fine and dandy except the livestream suffered a technical snafu — one that left the mayor sounding like a member of Alvin and the Chipmunks.
Watch and listen:
“Thank you everybody,” he can be heard saying in the video above with a voice higher-pitched than that of a 5-year-old girl. “I’m so happy with you and I apologize I couldn’t be there in person.”
“I had a canceled flight and could not get to you by my time slot, but I want to just say before I get into anything about why I’m running for president, what we have to do in this country, I want to thank you for the fight you’re waging every day.”
Video footage captured from other angles shows some of the attendees chuckling.
Look:
“So that was a little bit different,” the announcer says at the conclusion of Bill DeBlasio’s remarks, in which, due to some apparent audio difficulties, he sounded like he’d gulped a canister of helium. pic.twitter.com/WbZAcRCGfo
— Matt Viser (@mviser) August 21, 2019
De Blasio is appearing via a video feed that, hilariously and unfortunately, is distorting his voice by making it sound higher. pic.twitter.com/ae1zRYxXOZ
— Dave Weigel (@daveweigel) August 21, 2019
Happening now: @NYCMayor sends a video to the Iowa Federation of Labor due to being unable to make a flight. Appearing to have a helium effect on his voice, the curator notes that he was unsure why the Mayors voice sounded this way. Attendee reactions were questionable. pic.twitter.com/5o0FygQiEf
— Tom Brenner (@tombrennerphoto) August 21, 2019
It only got worse as someone on his campaign team tried to rectify the problem: “Whoever was operating the video equipment appeared to try and fix the audio as viewers could see a mouse pointer moving across the screen and a box popping up over de Blasio’s face,” Fox News noted.
When questioned later about the snafu, the mayor’s campaign team caught an attitude.
“It was obviously a technical glitch. I cannot believe you a [sic] writing a story on this,” campaign spokesperson Olivia Lapeyrolerie said in a curt statement to Fox.
As for de Blasio, he seemingly responded to the snafu well by joking about it later on Twitter:
A canceled flight can’t stop me from sharing my vision for putting unions and working people first (or apparently from auditioning for Alvin and the Chipmunks).
To @IowaAFLCIO: Stay tuned for a less-glitchy video featuring my actual (and less entertaining) voice. https://t.co/gTlYgVq6D6
— Bill de Blasio (@BilldeBlasio) August 21, 2019
It was ironic given how many people — including his own campaign officials, staffers and aides — believe that his whole campaign is itself one big joke.
“Even de Blasio’s staff think his presidential bid is a joke, say insiders,” the New York Post reported last month, citing unnamed campaign officials and staffers.
“It’s a joke,” one longtime aide bluntly said. “I think that he knows that he can’t win. It’s just a lot of eye-rolling. … He’s doing it because he’s got a big ego and needs to prove something, and I don’t think he’s going to quietly go away and become an adjunct professor at Hunter.”
“The chances seem so low. If we saw a clear shot for winning or polling higher, I think it would make more sense,” one staffer added.
Just how low are his chances? He reportedly polled at 0% in a recent Iowa caucus poll. Polling averages maintained by RealClearPolitics likewise show him sitting comfortably among the four lowest-polling candidates, including one who just dropped out of the race Wednesday.
Not only is he polling poorly, but he’s also irritating his own constituents, some of whom reportedly descended on the Iowa State Fair on Wednesday to pass out fake dollar “Bills” in mockery of all the taxpayer funds the mayor is allegedly wasting on his presidential bid.
“I said to myself this guy’s wasting millions of dollars in taxpayer money to run for president when … nobody supports him, and I’m thinking to myself what a waste,” Mike Fischer of the W. 58th Street Coalition said to the Post. “So we may as well print up dollar bills and hand it around and maybe he’ll get it.”
He added that de Blasio wasn’t there for his constituents when a massive power outage hit Manhattan last month.
“He’s not there for the power outage, he’s not there for the homeless people, he’s not there to help make sure that people aren’t put into unsafe buildings and now it’s time we get his attention,” Fischer said.
“Hoping to get their mayor’s attention, NYC residents have bought billboard space in Iowa.”
In Cedar Rapids, featuring a picture of de Blasio, the billboard reads: “Hey, Bill de Blasio! It’s New York … Remember Us?” https://t.co/1E4Npz9jN3— Maura Barrett (@MauraBarrettNBC) August 2, 2019
Meanwhile, NYC continues to face a rise in attacks on local officers by cop-hating mobs, a rise in “Muslim Community Patrol” squads and a rise in police officer suicides. It’s unclear what de Blasio plans to do about any of this.
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Vivek@bizpacreview.com
V. Saxena is a staff writer for BizPac Review with a decade of experience as a professional writer, and a lifetime of experience as an avid news junkie. He holds a degree in computer technology from Purdue University.
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