“President Trump and presidential candidate/fellow New Yorker Mike Bloomberg may have gotten into a Twitter spat on Thursday, but the real threat to Bloomberg’s campaign is his past. Earlier this week, an audio recording from 2015 of Bloomberg defending his controversial stop-and-frisk policy, which disproportionately affected minority residents during his time as New York City’s mayor, circulated through the press. Bloomberg said on tape, ‘We put all the cops in minority neighborhoods. Yes, that’s true. Why did we do it? Because that’s where all the crime is. And the way you get the guns out of the kids’ hands is to throw them against the wall and frisk them.’ Wow, that is not a good look. Think about it: while Bloomberg is out there trying to win the black vote in 2020, he’s on tape in 2015 talking about black people like they’re crime piñatas.” —Trevor Noah
“The comments are definitely not going to go over well with the black voters Bloomberg is trying to court. It’s the same way you would lose white voters if a tape came out of you saying that pets aren’t the same as babies. All the pumpkin spice in the world can’t save you after that.” —Trevor Noah
“Worse still, is that there are more damning comments; in an interview from last year, Bloomberg said white people are disproportionately targeted by stop-and-frisk, while minority residents are under-targeted. According to Bloomberg, white people were the real victims of stop-and-frisk. Black people and Latinos spent years – years – saying they were harassed by the police and Bloomberg’s response was: ‘I hear you, we have been unfair – to white people.’ Facing backlash, Bloomberg has been reticent, dismissing the comments as something said five years ago that ‘doesn’t reflect what I do every day.’ I call bullshit on that statement: Five years? What difference is that supposed to make for you? ‘Look, five years ago I was just a 72-year-old man, I didn’t know any better. I’m much older now, which automatically makes you less racist.’ —Trevor Noah
“A magisterial collection. An emotional roller coaster. Soon to be a cult classic.
A combination of Bukowski’s Last Night On Earth and Orwell’s 1984.”
