In recent days, liberal New York Mayor Bill de Blasio has targeted Fox News and its parent company News Corp with accusations of damaging the country. In an appearance during Sunday’s Reliable Sources on CNN, he defended his claims and fantasized about how well off the country would be if News Corp-owned news outlets didn’t exist.

“If you ask New York City’s mayor what lies behind a lot of the negativity and the divisiveness gripping this nation, he’s got a simple answer for you: He says it's the media empire of Rupert Murdoch that’s at fault,” CNN media reporter and host Brian Stelter prefaced before their interview. Even though Stelter is obsessed with bashing Fox news, he worried that de Blasio was wandering into “Trumpian” territory.

After being asked what his “critique” was of the conservative New Corp, the far-left Mayor unleashed his hatred. “We would be a more unified country,” he declared. “There would be less overt hate. There would be less appeal to racial division, I guarantee it. Because what Murdoch did through Fox News and the New York Post, among others, is to create a dynamic where that stuff could come out in the open.” The smears of racism aside, what he’s really talking about is allowing only liberal outlets to exist.

De Blasio decried News Corp for having a “political agenda” with their reporting and asserted that all they did was sew divisions in the country. Stelter pushed back and argued he was sounding like Trump:

STELTER: So you would rather not have the New York Post or Fox News exist? DE BLASIO: Look, it's a free country. I’m saying, because they exist we've been changed for the worst. Now, if you said— STELTER: But isn’t that like saying their fake news or they’re an enemy of the people? DE BLASIO: No, because I think what the President has tried to do is create a dynamic that's anti-media, anti-free speech, undermining democratic norms.

De Blasio admitted that he had “anti-News Corp feelings” and praised CNN and the rest of the liberal media by suggesting (falsely) that they didn’t have a political agenda. “I think it's also fair to say that when you look at CNN for example, you look at the major networks, they do not harbor a daily, hourly political agenda and bias. They provide both sides. It's part of their DNA,” he gushed.

“But singling out News Corp, it’s like Trump singling out CNN. Two wrongs don't make a right,” Stelter pushed back. He also noted that reporters from another New Corp brand, the New York Post had reached out to him to say de Blasio was doing the same thing Trump was. “But two things can be bad even if they’re not equal. They can both be bad,” Stelter said. (Remember this the next time the media decry Trump for creating a so-called “false equivalency”)

The Mayor responded by suggesting that News Corp was out to damage the fabric of society unlike the others and that was the reason that justified the means:

Does News Corp have a clear right-wing agenda? I think that one is pretty obvious. Do they sensationalize, racialize, and divide? Yes. Does that compare to CNN, NBC, CBS, ABC, The New York Times, The Washington Post? No. One of these things is not like the other.

Again pitching his anti-News Corp fantasy, de Blasio insisted that without Fox News there would be no President Trump. “A world without News Corp … What would we look like today? I guarantee you Donald Trump would not be president,” he said.

Not only would there be no hate and no alt-right, he even there would be no normal political right either. “I guarantee you that what we're seeing today in Washington, the right and the alt-right and negativity and division coming out in the fore and feeling it has license, that wouldn’t be true,” he proclaimed.

If that’s the case, then clearly his fantasy isn’t just about a world without a conservative news outlet, but a world without conservatives.

The transcript is below, click "expand' to read: