As protests over the death of George Floyd in police custody boiled over in New York City on Saturday and video of an NYPD vehicle driving into demonstrators sparked outrage, Mayor Bill de Blasio said he would not “blame” police officers facing such an “impossible situation.”

“If those protesters had just gotten out of the way and not created an attempt to surround that vehicle, we would not be talking about this,” de Blasio said in a call-in appearance on NY1 just before a hastily scheduled late-night press conference…

While defending police against protesters who he said “did the wrong thing” by surrounding the vehicle, de Blasio also claimed most of the unrest in his city came from outsiders. He said he’d been on a text chain with other mayors who reported on newly arrived groups of mostly white outsiders— an oblique reference to left-wing black-bloc types from the mayor who’s often blamed Donald Trump for inspiring ugly acts in New York—sparking confrontations with the police.