President Trump tweeted (and later deleted) a message to presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg calling him “a total racist” after audio surfaced of the Democrat defending “stop and frisk” policing specifically targeting minorities.
The remarks, made in 2015 at an event hosted by the Aspen Security Institute, reveal Bloomberg defending the tactic despite acknowledging that it led to significantly higher arrest rates for black and Hispanic men.
“95 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,” Bloomberg says in the recording. “They are male, minorities, 16-25. That’s true in New York, that’s true in virtually every city. And that’s where the real crime is.”
The former mayor of New York City proceeded to explain where the police need to be placed in order to prevent crime.
“Put the cops where the crime is, which means in minority neighborhoods,” he said.
Bloomberg shrugged off unintended consequences of minorities being arrested for marijuana possession claiming that’s where the guns are. The way you get those guns, he suggests, is you “throw them up against the walls and frisk them.”
This is just beyond the beyond. The matter-of-fact tone while Bloomberg justifies violating people’s civil rights based on skin color.
And let me add that anyone who’s followed me on Twitter for a while knows I have never been comfortable with stop-and-frisk. https://t.co/M7xpO1llO2
— John Ocasio-Nolte (@NolteNC) February 11, 2020
RELATED: Bloomberg Apologizes For Stop-And-Frisk Ahead Of Debates: ‘I Got Something Important Really Wrong’
Bloomberg … We Have a Problem
Team Trump was quick to capitalize on the controversial audio clip, with the President leading the way.
“WOW, BLOOMBERG IS A TOTAL RACIST!” Trump tweeted – but later removed – from his social media timeline.
Campaign manager Brad Parscale then tweeted a hashtag, “#BloombergIsARacist,” accompanying another clip from a 2013 interview where the Democrat laments that police stop white people “too much” and minorities “too little.”
#BloombergIsARacist https://t.co/MD4HKFDojM
— Brad Parscale – Text TRUMP to 88022 (@parscale) February 11, 2020
The President’s son, Donald Trump Jr. tweeted the same hashtag adding, “Omg! Leaked audio of Mike Bloomberg talking about the high crime rates among urban minorities.”
Omg! Leaked audio of Mike Bloomberg talking about the high crime rates among urban minorities.
“And the way to get the guns out of the kids hands is to throw them up against the wall and frisk them” #BloombergIsARacist pic.twitter.com/MkONUhQQpX
— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) February 11, 2020
As several Democrat candidates to challenge Trump in 2020 are tripping over themselves by turning voters away, Bloomberg was expected to make a move in the primary.
‘Stop and frisk’ has been an Achilles heel that he’s been able to overcome thus far. Bloomberg apologized for his support of the program saying, “I got something important really wrong.”
With that, a Quinnipiac University poll showed 22 percent of black voters said they support Bloomberg, second only behind Joe Biden.
Others noted that Bloomberg’s “stop and frisk” policy didn’t apply to all ‘minority neighborhoods,’ just certain ones.
Chinatown is a “minority neighborhood,” but the cops weren’t sent there.
Why not? https://t.co/z3vRoTicAj
— Stefan Molyneux (@StefanMolyneux) February 11, 2020
As part of his apology, Bloomberg added: “I didn’t understand back then the full impact that stops were having on the black and Latino communities.”
This new audio shows he clearly understood the impact but didn’t mind the collateral damage in minority communities.
When @AspenInstitute and @grassrootstv complied with Bloomy’s order to bury the video of his stop-and-frisk talk, then-local journalist @KarlHerk posted the full audio on YouTube. It is still up.https://t.co/JBDgHGMYtK
— Phil Kerpen (@kerpen) February 11, 2020
RELATED: Liberals Scorch Bloomberg for his ‘Disingenuous’ Apology Over Stop-And-Frisk
Media Coverup
Remarkably, the Aspen Times had audio from the event, but at Bloomberg’s request, they declined to publish it.
“Michael Bloomberg representatives have asked the Aspen Institute not to distribute footage of his recent appearance in Aspen, where the three-term New York City mayor made pointed comments concerning minorities and gun control,” they reported at the time.
“Both the Institute and GrassRoots TV, the organization that filmed the event, confirmed Thursday that they will not broadcast the footage online or on television as planned.”
The Aspen Times noted it isn’t uncommon for guests to request they not run footage of an event for a variety of reasons.
Do you think for a moment that if they had audio of Trump saying these exact words that it wouldn’t have ended up on every major broadcast within hours?
