2020 Democrat Michael Bloomberg may be in more hot water after comments he made about minorities during a 2011 interview resurfaced.
“There’s this enormous cohort of black and Latino males, age, let’s say, 16 to 25, that don’t have jobs, don’t have any prospects, don’t know how to find jobs, don’t know what their skill sets are, [and] don’t know how to behave in the workplace where they have to work collaboratively and collectively,” Bloomberg said in an interview with PBS.
“If you look at where crime takes place, it’s in minority neighborhoods,” the former New York City mayor added. “If you look at who the victims and the perpetrators are, it’s virtually all minorities. This is something that has gone on for a long time. I assume it’s prevalent elsewhere, but certainly true in New York City. And for many, many years, people said there was just nothing you can do about it.”
The resurfaced clip comes after the presidential contender apologized earlier this month for leaked 2015 audio in which he defended his stop-and-frisk policy.
“Ninety-five percent of your murders, murderers, and murder victims, fit one M.O. You can just take the description, Xerox it, and pass it out to all the cops,” he can be heard saying in that recording. “They are male, minorities, 16 to 25. That’s true in New York, that’s true in virtually every city. And that’s where the real crime is. You’ve got to get the guns out of the hands of people that are getting killed.”
The billionaire candidate then added that law enforcement officials could “get the guns out of the kids’ hands” by throwing “them up against the wall” and frisking them.
Bloomberg had previously apologized for stop and frisk before announcing his presidential run. He has been surging in recent polls for the Democratic presidential primary with nearly 15% support, according to RealClearPolitics.
[Also read: Bloomberg takes aim at Wall Street with financial transactions tax and regulations]
