The nine most outrageous things that Rob Ford has said in the past 24 hours
Stripped of almost all his mayoral responsibilities, Rob Ford appears to be easing into his new full-time position: self-aggrandizing spin machine. Since yesterday evening, Toronto’s sort-of mayor has appeared on CBC, CNN and NBC, as well as his new Sun News Network show, repeating a series of folksy talking points about not being perfect and siding with “poor people” instead of “rich people” like himself. But is Ford’s media blitz is really helping his case? With each interview, his explanations become more convoluted, his rants more unhinged and his denials less plausible. Below, we pull out the day’s most bizarre quotes.
—to CBC’s Peter Mansbridge, in the mayor’s first sit-down interview after council stripped him of nearly all his powers
—in the same CBC interview, following a vow that he would never drink again.
—in response to a question this morning from NBC’s Matt Lauer about whether Ford could have handled a city emergency when he was heavily intoxicated
—on his new Sun News Network show, Ford Nation, which premiered last night
“I am a role model.”
—just a few minutes earlier in the show
—to CNN producer Bill Weir in a two-part interview that continued last night
—also to Weir, conveniently forgetting that he spent months claiming he didn’t smoke crack
—heckling the unfriendly public gallery during the council meeting. Doug also painted the crowd as “special interests,” and said they weren’t “real taxpayers”
—during a furious harangue at the end of yesterday’s council meeting
