State Senator Greg Ball says President Barack Obama and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio are "cut from the exact same cloth" in their divisive racial politics — and he blamed de Blasio for creating the tense atmosphere in which two police officers were executed over the weekend.
Ball, a Republican, was asked Monday on "The Steve Malzberg Show" on
Newsmax TV about de Blasio's statement that he fears for the safety of his biracial son Dante around police.
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"That statement is wrong in so many ways, but it shouldn't surprise. It should disgust good Americans and good New Yorkers of which there are many, but it shouldn't surprise us," Ball said.
"De Blasio and Obama are cut from the exact same cloth. When you're in a primary you run to the left, if you're a Democrat, you run to the right if you're a Republican.
"But most good elected officials once they get elected they govern from the center to the best of their ability and they try to represent everybody in their city, everybody in their state to the best of their ability while standing on principle."
De Blasio's comments — made after a New York grand jury declined to indict a white police officer who placed a fatal chokehold on a black suspect names Eric Garner — angered police.
Ball said of de Blasio:
"I have never seen a white guy play the race card so well. The last true racist in this country are the elitist liberals in their ivory tower and it's disgusting," Ball said.
"The continued use of his personal story to protect himself and to put others in danger, which is exactly what he has done, he continues to race bait.
"[That has occurred] not only during a campaign, but as an elected official and it has ended in a tragedy and he is directly responsible and there's no question about that."
On Saturday, a Baltimore man with a long criminal record walked up to a police car in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn and shot dead Officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu.
Ismaaiyl Brinsely, who then killed himself, suggested on social media that he was avenging the deaths of Eric Garner and Michael Brown at the hands of cops.
Police were so angry at de Blasio's perceived slight, some turned their backs to him when he visited a hospital where the two officers were brought.
"Leadership matters and we've seen it clear as day. [De Blasio] is taking his marching orders from President Obama," Ball said.
"My parents, although they always protected their kids, they had faith in the system, in that principal, in that teacher … As a kid, you didn't want to pick up that phone and say you know what, I got in trouble at school … You minded your manners and you respected authority."
"If I went up to a cop and started punching him, what the hell do you think would happen to me? If I was high and drunk and stole stuff and beat up a shopkeeper and then went after a cop. What do you think? You think they're going to say, oh, Greg that's OK because you're a white guy. It's ludicrous."
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