Michael Bloomberg’s making a pretty valiant effort to buy the Democratic presidential nomination, but all that money can’t quite quash the many documented misogynistic, racist, and transphobic statements he’s made over the years. For instance: this video from 2019 showing Bloomberg referring to transgender people as “it” and “some guy in a dress.” 2019! Jesus Christ, dude!
Buzzfeed reports that the video, which was posted on YouTube, shows Bloomberg speaking at a forum the Bermuda Business Development Agency hosted in Manhattan last March . It seems the former NYC Mayor is unimpressed by some Democrats’ push for protections for transgender people, a number of which have been under siege by the Trump administration over the last few years, despite the continued high rates of documented violence against the transgender community.
“If you go to the middle of the country, people would say, ‘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 says in the video. “They care about healthcare, they care about education, they care about safety, and all those kinds of things.”
It’s about 12-and-a-half minutes into the video:
It is also not the first time in recent history that Bloomberg’s gone on record using this kind of dehumanizing language. Earlier this month, a video circulated showing Bloomberg similarly describing transgender people as “some man wearing a dress,” this time in 2016.
Bloomberg’s whole pitch is that he’s the moderate alternative to some of the Democrats’ progressive (i.e., not Republican on the wrong ticket) candidates. But, uh, boy is that alternative starting to sound a tad like what we’re already stuck with.