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CNN debate rules could handcuff de Blasio

Mayor Bill de Blasio’s loose lips could cost him during this week’s Democratic debate.

CNN’s stringent debate rules will dock time from candidates who continually interrupt during the second round of party presidential debates in Detroit – de Blasio’s M.O. during the first debates last month.

The news network will air the debates over two days on Tuesday and Wednesday to accommodate the 20-plus field of hopefuls, with both airing at 8 p.m.

De Blasio is scheduled to be in the Wednesday group.

According to CNN, candidates will have 60 seconds to respond to questions from moderators, and 30 seconds for rebuttals. If one is singled out by an opponent, they’re allowed 30 seconds as well.

But candidates will lose some of their allotted time if they interrupt or speak over others.





That could be a blow to de Blasio’s struggling, long-shot campaign given the “surprisingly confrontational energy” – as the Kansas City Star described it – that he brought to last month’s debates.

In one heated exchange in the June 27 debate, de Blasio abruptly shut down Rep. Beto O’Rourke after the Texas congressman called private health insurance “fundamental… to get everybody cared for.”

“Congressman O’Rourke,” de Blasio interrupted. “Private insurance isn’t working for tens of millions of Americans when you talk about co-pays, the deductibles, the premiums. It’s not working.

“How can you defend a system that’s not working?”

De Blasio can hardly afford another hurdle.

It seems unlikely he’ll meet the donor threshold to qualify for the third round of debates in September in Houston. De Blasio is so far behind the donor requirement to qualify for that debate that he begged supporters to make $1 contributions last week.





The Post also reported that even City Hall staffers consider the mayor’s presidential bid a joke.

“I think that he knows that he can’t win. It’s just a lot of eye-rolling,” one aide said. “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.”

Jaclyn Rothenberg, the de Blasio campaign’s press secretary, said Friday that “by all accounts” the mayor “had a very good first debate performance” and is practicing for this week’s.





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