Trump blasts Mike Bloomberg over ‘stop-and-frisk’ apology
President Trump repeatedly ridiculed Michael Bloomberg on Tuesday afternoon following the emergence of a recorded speech in which the former New York City mayor defended his controversial “stop-and-frisk” policy.
Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, Trump mocked the public apology for stop-and-frisk that Bloomberg made at a predominantly black church in Brooklyn shortly before launching his Democratic presidential campaign last year.
“I watched him pander at a church and practically beg for forgiveness,” Trump said.
“I wouldn’t have begged for forgiveness, I mean, he was doing his job at the time. When he went up to the church, I thought it was disgraceful, and I put something out, and it was pretty nasty. And I thought, you know, I’m looking to bring the country together not divide the country further.”
Trump also said that Bloomberg’s mea culpa at East New York’s Christian Cultural Center “was only for getting votes, and I think probably people understand that.”
When asked whether he supported stop-and-frisk, Trump said, “I support anything we can do to get down crime and to get rid of drugs.'”
“But I think when a man is with stop-and-frisk his whole life, and then he decides to go Democrat, and he goes to a church and he’s practically crying — he looked like hell — he’s practically crying, saying what a horrible thing he did, I think it’s so disingenuous,” Trump said.
Trump also called Bloomberg “one of the worst debaters I’ve ever seen,” adding that “his presence is zero.”
“Frankly, I’d rather run against Bloomberg than Bernie Sanders because Sanders has real followers, whether you like ’em or not, whether you agree with ’em or not,” the president said.
“Bloomberg is just buying his way in … But go back to the church where he apologized for everything he ever did practically. And he looked pathetic, our country doesn’t need that kind of leadership.”
Earlier Tuesday, an audio recording surfaced online in which Bloomberg justified the NYPD’s use of stop-and-frisk on grounds that it was “the way you get the guns out of the kids’ hands” and “stop them from getting murdered.”
During his 2015 speech to the Aspen Institute, Bloomberg also claimed that cops could search for murder suspects with a “Xerox” description of “male, minorities, 16 to 25” and admitted that the NYPD targeted kids in minority communities because “that’s where the crime is.”
Trump initially responded to the revelation of the remarks by tweeting “WOW, BLOOMBERG IS A TOTAL RACIST!” and a link to the online audio recording, but h🍒is tweet was deleted minutes later.