Brad Parscale on Bloomberg defending ‘stop and frisk’ in audio: 'I don't think all the money in the world can undo that'
President Trump's reelection campaign manager Brad Parscale said on Tuesday, “I don't think all the money in the world can undo” what Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg said in the newly surfaced recording from a 2015 speech.
President Trump's reelection campaign manager Brad Parscale told Fox News Tuesday that "I don't think all the money in the world can undo” what Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg said in a newly surfaced recording of a 2015 speech in which the former New York City mayor made a full-throated defense of the controversial policing procedure known as "stop and frisk."
Parscale also told “The Daily Briefing” host Dana Perino that Bloomberg is now “in a difficult spot.”
In remarks to the nonprofit Aspen Institute, the billionaire Bloomberg acknowledged that "stop and frisk" targeted minority "kids" whom cops must throw "up against the wall" to ensure they were not carrying weapons. The Aspen Times reported at the time that Bloomberg representatives asked the Institute not to distribute footage of his appearance.
"Ninety-five percent of murders -- murderers and murder victims -- fit one M.O. You can just take a description, Xerox it, and pass it out to all the cops," he said. "They are male, minorities, 16-25 [years old]. That's true in New York, that's true in virtually every city ... And that's where the real crime is. You've got to get the guns out of the hands of people that are getting killed."
“For 20 years he [Bloomberg] supported this policy, but I don't think it's just about the policy," Parscale said Tuesday. "I think it's about how he was talking, it was very demeaning, the characterization of the use of the minority neighborhoods. I think he’s in a troubled spot.”
President Trump blasted his fellow New Yorker after the audio emerged, tweeting Tuesday morning: '"WOW, BLOOMBERG IS A TOTAL RACIST!" The tweet was later taken down, without explanation, but Parscale later tweeted "#BloombergIsARacist," next to a separate clip of Bloomberg complaining in a 2013 radio interview that police stop white people "too much" and minorities "too little."
Parscale told Perino, “I can't talk to you about exactly why he [Trump] deleted the tweet, but I’ll tell you, it’s not just about the policy, listen to the comments. 'We have to send police to those neighborhoods because that’s where the criminals are,' the phrase, 'We can Xerox copy every minority child in these neighborhoods,' I think is a very demoralizing thing."
"It's not about the policy," Parscale emphasized.
In a statement released on Tuesday, Bloomberg said he "inherited the police practice of stop-and-frisk" when he took office as mayor in 2002 and stressed that he had "cut" back on the practice by 95 percent by the time he left office. Bloomberg also admitted he "should've done it faster and sooner" and that he has "taken responsibility for taking too long to understand the impact it had on Black and Latino communities."
“I think he's going to own it, he's going to keep it forever, this isn't something you can do an apology tour over, the way his comments have been,” Parscale said Tuesday.
Bloomberg, who is funding his campaign with hundreds of millions of dollars from his vast fortune, has surged in recent polls as some within the Democrat Party seek a moderate alternative to far-left candidates such as senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, and former Vice President Joe Biden's campaign appears to be in free-fall. Bloomberg, who succeeded Rudy Giuliani as mayor of America's biggest city, has been repeatedly grilled about his previous support for "stop and frisk," which some critics consider a racist approach to policing.
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“I’m not worried about any of these candidates,” Parscale told Perino.
He added, “You can’t buy people to like you. Watch a Trump rally versus a Bloomberg rally, those people look like they are lethargic.”
Fox News’ Joseph A. Wulfsohn contributed to this report.
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