More he talks, worse it gets

MAYOR DE BLASIO on Thursday stopped short of calling Bo Dietl’s bizarre comment about a judge looking like his wife racist, instead comparing the remark to those made about the judiciary by another politician.

“My reaction is that Bo Dietl, like Donald Trump, somehow thinks that our judges make their decisions based on their race or their ethnicity,” the mayor said. “That is a thoroughly un-American assumption and it’s not acceptable.”

While President Trump was widely criticized for saying that a federal judge couldn’t fairly consider a case against Trump University because the judge was of Mexican descent, an unapologetic Dietl said his comment about Chirlane McCray was only made in jest.

“It was said more in a kidding sense,” Dietl told the Daily News. “Nothing about race, nothing about her being black.”

The mayoral hopeful and former cop made the remark on Wednesday during a candidate screening held by the Manhattan Republican Party.

Dietl was discussing his effort to run on the Democratic line and his disqualification for checking two boxes on his paperwork. The fight wound up in court.

“First of all, the judge looked like Chirlane de Blasio,” Dietl said, to loud laughter from packed crowd of Republicans inside an Upper East Side townhome. “And as soon as I saw her, as soon as I saw her I knew I had a problem.”

The mayor’s wife, whom Dietl continued to call by her husband’s last name Thursday, is African-American, as is the judge, Debra James.

“They have the same smile, same eyes,” the former Fox News commentator told The News as he pulled up pictures of the two women on his BlackBerry. “You tell me these two don’t look like sisters.”

None of the Republican candidates said anything about the quip from the dais on Wednesday. But real estate developer Paul Massey, who leads the GOP field in fund-raising, put out a statement on Thursday morning condemning Dietl.

“Bo Dietl’s racist remark about a judge and the mayor’s wife during last night’s forum shows why he has no place in the Republican Party,” Massey said. “We need real leadership in the city that stands against racist remarks of any kind.”

Dietl in turn accused Massey of being the bigot.

“People that are making these comments, including Massey, maybe he’s a racist,” Dietl said. “Why would he take it this way?”

Dietl, who appeared Thursday at the Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network conference, said he felt no need to apologize or backoff from his remarks.

“I didn’t say, ‘Oh, wait, that black woman looks just like the other black woman.’ I didn’t say that,” he said before taking the stage with Sharpton at his side.

Dietl received a warm reception from the National Action Network crowd — and his comments about McCray were not mentioned.

Sharpton got in some friendly banter with Dietl. “When I met you in the ’80s, you handcuffed me,” he told Dietl to laughs from the crowd.

Bo’s no racist, he insists, and he’s got the Rev. Al Sharpton to prove it. Bo Dietl, who is running for mayor on his own line, revealed how his mind works by saying at Wednesday’s Republican Party candidate screening that he wasn’t allowed to run as a Democrat (after he tried registering as both a Democrat and an Independent) because the judge in the case “looked like Chirlane de Blasio . . . And as soon as I saw her, as soon as I saw her I knew I had a problem.”

Bo thinks saying that one black woman looks just like another black woman isn’t a problem — even though he said that was the cause of his problem. He also sees no problem in saying that he knew a black woman would rule against him based on her appearance.

Now it’s turned into Bo’s bigger problem as he tries to claim that he saw the judge as biased not because she is black but because, in his view, women who resemble other women think alike.

But he puts it down to politics. “Anybody who says I’m a racist, is a racist,” he claims. “If I was a racist, would Rev. Al Sharpton invite me to talk at the National Action Network today? No. He loves me! I’m a lifelong Republican, and the only candidate President Ronald Reagan endorsed when I was running for Congress.”

Worth noting: He was trying to get on the Democratic line.

Dietl says his meaning last night was totally misconstrued. “If I walked into divorce court and the judge looked like my ex-wife,” he yelled over the phone, “I’d say ‘I’m in trouble because the judge looks like my ex-wife.’ And as soon as I walked into that court, I knew I was in trouble. That’s all I meant. And besides the judge, (Debra James) was a Democratic appointee.”

“Politics are something!” he continued. “Every time you say something it’s diced and chopped and looked over and around.”

As for the judge, “She said, ‘You checked two boxes, you’re a man with no party.’ But you know why? Because she was a Democratic appointee and Mayor de Blasio had three lawyers there to go against me!”

When I pointed out that it was very unlikely that the mayor personally sent lawyers, Bo repeated, “Three lawyers — all of them Mayor de Blasio’s flunkies.”

“Did any of them look like Chirlane?” I asked. He just laughed and talked about de Blasio’s incompetence.

Bo might not have a shot at winning at this point, but for sure this campaign won’t be boring.