NEW YORK CITY MAYOR BILL DE BLASIO DEFENDS ATTACKS ON JOE BIDEN ON THE VIEW

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio

2020 Hopeful and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio joins the table to defend his attack on Joe Biden at the Democratic Debates

On Joe Biden and former President Obama attacks:

"I was not attacking Obama. Come on, let's get real. It's questioning whether those deportations made sense and asking a vice president to explain his role in it. Do you think these questions will not come up later?" de Blasio said. "I was challenging Biden because I want to hear him say, 'Here's what I did,' 'Here's what I stand for,' because whoever is going to be the Democratic nominee has to be able to do that."

On public arguments within the Democratic party:

"If we can have this discussion in our family -- and yeah it's a family that happens to be televised -- we then can figure out who we are as Democrats and go into battle ready to win," de Blasio said.

On his low approval ratings: 

"I represent 8.6 million highly opinionated people, and it's probably a great thing to work in a place that puts you through your paces every single day."

On reduction of stop and frisk policing in New York: 

"Stop-and-frisk was a policy that was really tearing community and police apart. It was creating tension and division... A lot of naysayers said, 'Oh, my God, chaos, disorder, it'll go to hell.' What happened was the opposite. We got safer because we brought this community together"

On campaigning during a New York City power outage:

"That's the interpretation of the media, with all due respect, most crises, if I said to you it's over in five hours and not a single person got injured, you'd say, 'Wow something is working.' I'm proud of my team and what they did. And it meant that we were prepared."

Courtesy of ABC / Disney