New York Mayor Bill de Blasio is considering a run for president. | Hans Pennink/AP Photo Technology Amazon ‘couldn’t handle the heat,’ NYC’s de Blasio says

Amazon caved to public scrutiny by abandoning plans to build a headquarters in New York, Mayor Bill de Blasio said Sunday.

In an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press,“ de Blasio repeated the Amazon.com Inc. attack he’s been making in the days since the e-commerce giant said on Feb. 14 that it won’t build a corporate headquarters in Queens. While some New York Democrats, like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, welcomed Amazon’s withdrawal, Rep. Carolyn Maloney lamented that the company’s retreat would take jobs away from locals.


“The minute there were criticisms, they walked away,” de Blasio said of Amazon. “They were more concerned about their corporate image."

“They couldn't handle the heat in the kitchen, is what it looks like,” he said.

He also echoed the Democratic Party’s progressive wing by arguing Amazon’s decision was fueled by corporate greed.

“A group of very powerful people, the ultimate members of the 1 percent, got together in a boardroom in Seattle and made a very arbitrary decision,” de Blasio, who's considering a run for president, said.

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“We're going to stop this horrible reality of concentration of power in the hands of the 1 percent,” he said.

De Blasio received support Sunday from Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, another potential presidential contender.

Speaking on CNN, Brown compared Amazon’s New York retreat to a similar situation between Wisconsin and Foxconn Technology Group. The Taiwan-based company was promised billions of dollars of incentives to build a campus in the state. But earlier this year, the company said its Wisconsin facility would be smaller than promised in 2017 and backed away from specifying what types of jobs would be at the facility.

“There are local communities that resent giving huge tax breaks to billionaires,” Brown said.

