Billionaire mainstream media magnate, former New York City Republican mayor, and current Democratic Party presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg is spending big bucks to run against Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), former South Bend, Ind., mayor Pete Buttigieg, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), and former Vice President Joe Biden (D-Del.). So far his big ad buys throughout the nation have brought him into second place, behind first-place candidate Sanders. But the millions spent have not washed away concerns about the racist stop-and-frisk programs he championed while he was New York’s mayor and about his own attitudes, statements, and actions regarding people of color.
Now, a new hurdle for Bloomberg. A new Daily Beast piece shares news of incidents from just last year, in which the centrist reportedly showed disdain for transgender USians.
Mike Bloomberg, who is described in a new campaign ad as “incredibly sensitive” to the LGBTQ community, described transgender people as an “he, she, or it” and “some guy in a dress” just eight months before he announced his campaign, BuzzFeed News reports. “If your conversation during a presidential election is about some guy wearing a dress and whether he, she, or it can go to the locker room with their daughter, that’s not a winning formula for most people,” Bloomberg said at a Manhattan forum hosted by the Bermuda Development Agency in March 2019, where the former New York mayor criticized Democratic candidates for talking about transgender protections.
He made a similar comment about a “man wearing a dress” in 2016. However, his remarks last year came during the early stages of the 2020 Democratic primary. Bloomberg reportedly said that Democratic candidates needed to avoid talking about transgender people and that their liberal stances ultimately led to Trump’s 2016 presidential win.
Read the rest of the story on Buzzfeed.