Mayor Rob Ford has told CNN he’s “the best father around” and he doesn’t think of himself as the mayor, just as a “normal, everyday person.”

Ford talked to Bill Weir on the Anderson Cooper 360 show, a portion of which the network aired Monday morning. The full interview will air Monday night.

When Weir pressed the mayor about seeing an addiction specialist, Ford became angry and tried to stop the interview.

“I’m not an addict! You guys can spin it, you can tell it all you want.

“This is the thing. I don’t look at myself as the mayor. I look at myself as just a normal, everyday person.”

In the background, Doug Ford, a city councilor, said to his brother, “Okay, settle down.”

Weir persuaded Ford to take one last question and said to him: “I know a lot of people who would party their brains out, but they’re parents. I’m sure you’re insulating your children from what’s going on.”

The mayor replied, “Absolutely, I’m the best father around.”

Weir said, “There’s going to come a day when they Google their dad. . . ” and Ford told him, “Absolutely and I’m going to explain what they’re hearing. I’m straightforward with my kids. What, do you just dismiss them, do you just walk away? I don’t walk away from any one, Bill, in life. All these rich, elitist people, I’m sick of them! I’m sick of them! They’re the biggest crooks around.”

Doug Ford had invited Weir to interview him and his brother at the Toronto Community Housing project on Queen’s Plate Drive crowded with Ford supporters “in the heart of Ford Nation,” as Weir described it.

Doug Ford said the public had the wrong idea about his brother’s politics.

“He’s a huge, massive social liberal,” Doug Ford said of Rob. “He loves (U.S. President Barack) Obama. The headlines of the papers when he won? ‘The White Obama.’”

At the start of the interview excerpt, Ford repeated his assertion that he’s “not an addict.

“Why go see an addiction specialist if I’m not an addict? I’m not an alcoholic. I’m not a drug addict.”

Weir asked him, “Do you realize how much you’re perceived around the rest of the country, around the rest of the continent?

The mayor replied: “They can make fun of me, they can laugh at me all they want. They don’t know Rob Ford. These people know me. I’m born and raised here.”

Ford explained he admitted to smoking crack after six months of denials because “I’m not going to run around and be phony and lie. I’m not going have someone trying to blackmail me, sending out videos of this. I don’t trust what the Toronto Star says. I’ve just had enough. I’m sick and tired of all these allegations and all this bulls---.”

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Ford caught himself and said, “I shouldn’t have sworn in front of the kids.”

He insisted to Weir that he didn’t lie when he first denied smoking crack, saying the media asked him in the present tense and asked if he was an addict.

“I didn’t lie,” said Ford. “Have I? Yes.”

When Weir said that was just semantics, Ford attacked him for putting media spin on the story.

Weir asked him if he might not be “more effective if you were a little healthier.”

Ford explained he “tried to lose some weight. I’m not perfect.”

The invitation to Toronto came Friday during Weir’s interview with Doug Ford via satellite.

“How could anyone in their right mind ever vote for your brother again?” Weir asked Doug Ford. The councillor invited him to Toronto for the weekend.

“And 18 hours later, I’m helping him unload toys from his SUV beneath the high-rise, low-income apartments,” Weir said on the show.

In an interview with CNN anchors on Monday morning, Weir described Rob Ford as “a talented politician.”

After their interview, Weir said, Ford “hung out, he talked football. The more we question his judgment, the more he can blame it on the liberal elites.”