In another remark sure to anger the woke Democratic base of 2020, former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg just last year referred to transgender people as “it.”
According to a report in Buzzfeed News on Tuesday, which posted the relevant video, Mr. Bloomberg made the remark at a Bermuda Business Development Agency forum in New York on March 21, 2019.
“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,” he said in the video, the part of the conversation starting at about the 12:30 mark.
The quote prompted no obvious reaction from the crowd at the forum or either of Mr Bloomberg’s co-panelists — Bermuda Premier David Burt and AIG President & CEO Brian Duperreault.
Buzzfeed reported the remarks, plus another disparaging reference to transgender issues as a “man in a dress,” on the same day the Bloomberg campaign posted a video touting his stance on “LGBTQ+ youth,” and claiming that “Mike is so incredibly sensitive to this issue.”
The earlier remarks in 2016 came when Mr. Bloomberg discussed the fallout of a fight over a North Carolina “bathroom law.”
“If you want to know if somebody is a good salesman, give him the job of going to the Midwest and picking a town and selling to that town the concept that some man wearing a dress should be in a locker room with their daughter,” he said then.
Buzzfeed reported that, when asked about the 2019 remarks, the Bloomberg campaign did not respond to its “questions about whether Bloomberg thinks a transgender woman is ’a guy wearing a dress’ or an ’it,’ if transgender rights are a liability for Democratic presidential candidates, or how his campaign video on LGBTQ+ rights squares with his comments less than a year ago.”
Instead the campaign issued a lengthy statement touting other things.
“Mike understands that the transgender community has been under attack for decades and the advance of rights has not been equal. In April 2002, during his first year as mayor, Mike signed a sweeping transgender civil rights bill into law. His company provides comprehensive healthcare coverage for his transgender employees. As president, he has a comprehensive plan to secure rights for transgender Americans, including passing the Equality Act, ensuring transgender people have access to affirming healthcare and working to end the crisis of violence against transgender women. Mike is running to defeat Donald Trump and reverse the many policies he has implemented that attack the rights of the transgender community,” the statement read.
• Victor Morton can be reached at vmorton@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.