Joe Biden was pressed for his thoughts on the resurfaced audio in which Michael Bloomberg can he heard voicing his support for stop-and-frisk policies.
“Look, um,” Biden started Thursday during an appearance on ABC’s The View before chuckling.
“Why are you laughing?” a host asked.
The former vice president, once a front-runner for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination until stumbling in Iowa and New Hampshire, responded: “I’m laughing because it’s amazing how every single thing I’ve said for the last 40 years has come up.”
“I’ve answered them all. We’re just now getting into the place [where] we’re looking at other people’s records,” he added.
Joe Biden reacts to recently resurfaced audio of Mike Bloomberg: “Every single thing I’ve said for the last 40 years has come up… we’re just now getting into looking at people’s records.” https://t.co/f8u2wbJuik pic.twitter.com/KLgpRpQpeS
— The View (@TheView) February 13, 2020
[Related: ‘Sad and despicable’: Biden aide slams Bloomberg for leaked audio of stop-and-frisk praise]
Biden and Bloomberg, both 77, share more than just their age. They are also jostling for the same center-left Democrats in what remains a crowded field. The billionaire former mayor of New York City, however, diverges from the 36-year Delaware senator because he’s self-funding his campaign and is forgoing the four early voting states and is instead focusing on the 14 Super Tuesday states that weigh in on March 3.
The pair may finally face each other on a debate stage next week in Las Vegas after the Democratic National Committee dropped the grassroots fundraising requirement for the Nevada round.
“I’m going to get a chance to debate him on everything from redlining, on stop and frisk,” Biden told The View.
“You can just take a description, Xerox it, and pass it out to all the cops. They are male minorities, 16 to 25,” he said. “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.”
The media mogul and philanthropist has apologized for introducing and defending stop-and-frisk policies in New York City, the crux of which involved detaining individuals for a short period of time to check to see whether they had illegal weapons or other contraband. Critics complain the approach had a disproportionate effect on the black and Latino communities.
Then, on Thursday, a 2008 video of Bloomberg resurfaced in which he linked the nixing of “redlining,” a discriminatory housing practice, to the financial crisis.
Biden, who retreated to South Carolina before the polls closed in New Hampshire on Tuesday night to try to shore up his “firewall” before Nevada, is attempting to reinvigorate his bid after new public opinion surveys show his support among black Democrats is softening.
On The View, he also reflected on the political attacks lobbed his way by President Trump and Republicans, saying every Democrat will be on the receiving end of their salvos.
“Now, Pete’s got some traction. They’re going to go after Pete for being gay,” Biden said.
