President Trump deleted a tweet calling 2020 Democrat Michael Bloomberg a racist after years-old audio surfaced of the former mayor defending the stop-and-frisk policy.
The audio, which was released Monday, came from a 2015 speaking event Bloomberg participated in at the Aspen Institute, during which he acknowledged that the policy disproportionately affected minorities but defended it anyway.
The president retweeted a clip of the audio the next day and captioned it, “WOW, BLOOMBERG IS A TOTAL RACIST!” He deleted the tweet a short time later.
At 8:40 Trump tweets that BLOOMBERG IS A TOTAL RACIST!!! along with an audio clip of a racist rant by the then Mayor Bloomberg about Stop and Frisk. The tweet has since been deleted. pic.twitter.com/qy4mdOcVHx
— MadLib (@MadLibAdLib) February 11, 2020
In 2016, then-candidate Trump similarly praised the policy and called for its implementation nationwide.
“I would do stop and frisk. I think you have to. We did it in New York, it worked incredibly well, and you have to be proactive, and, you know, you really help people sort of change their mind automatically,” he said in the interview with Fox News.
Trump tweeted again about Bloomberg on Tuesday, saying, “Mini Mike is a short ball (very) hitter. Tiny club head speed. KEEP AMERICA GREAT!” His comment was in response to a photo showing him and the former mayor on the golf course.
Mini Mike is a short ball (very) hitter. Tiny club head speed. KEEP AMERICA GREAT! https://t.co/5DUj16jtZf
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 11, 2020
In the leaked audio, Bloomberg said: “Ninety-five percent of murders, murderers and murder victims, fit one M.O. You can just take a description, Xerox it, and pass it out to all the cops. They are male, minorities, 16 to 25.”
He continued, “And the way you get the guns out of the kids’ hands is to throw them up against the wall and frisk them. And then they start, ’Oh, I don’t want to get caught,’ so they don’t bring the gun. They still have a gun, but they leave it at home.”
Bloomberg apologized for his previous defenses of stop and frisk in November before entering the 2020 presidential race.
[Opinion: Michael Bloomberg’s comments on racial profiling are a problem for the Democratic Party]
