Bill de Blasio Wasn't Expecting This Question About Free Busing...and He Totally Collapsed

Matt Vespa | September 04, 2025 7:30 AM

Former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio was not expecting MSNBC to press him on the details about this public policy position, and it was painfully entertaining. The man collapsed. Full stop. De Blasio is backing Zohran Mamdani because terrible politicians stick together. The former mayor was discussing how free busing, part of Mamdani’s platform, works, but was not prepared for MSNBC’s Morning Joe asking where this has been the case. He didn’t have an answer:

Bill De Blasio: Free buses have been proved to work.

MSNBC: “Where?!”

De Blasio: Uh, I don’t have a list of cities. pic.twitter.com/hHnTIklrSD
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) September 2, 2025

And it doesn’t work. Kansas City tried this, and it failed. It also had a city-run grocery store, which also failed. Kansas City stopped free busing over budget concerns (via NY Post):

Kansas City’s $50 million experiment with free bus fare is hitting the brakes — because the city can no longer afford it.
Mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani’s socialist proposals — including free buses in the five boroughs and Soviet-style, city-owned grocery stores — are now 0-2 when tried elsewhere, after Kansas City’s own venture with a government-run grocery abruptly closed earlier this month.
The Midwest city used federal COVID-19 relief money in 2020 to become the first in the country to institute free buses.
But local funding dried up, and riders and conductors slammed the buses as unreliable, filthy, rolling homeless shelters, something critics say could easily happen in Gotham.
[…]
Mamdani, who’s made free bus service citywide is a centerpiece of his mayoral campaign, was behind a 2023 state pilot to bring one free bus route to each of the five boroughs.
He later co-wrote an editorial in The Nation, declaring that “continuing to make buses free in New York is more attainable than you might believe.”