Presidential candidate and former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg is "out of touch" with residents of his own city and is an elitist who cannot relate to "everyday people," said his successor and frequent critic, current Mayor Bill de Blasio.
"When you watch Michael Bloomberg on that debate stage, he's got no clue what everyday people are going through," de Blasio told Fox News' "Hannity" on Wednesday night. "He doesn't care to know. When he was mayor here, if you tried to talk about what's happening in neighborhoods, what was happening to everyday people, all he could think about was that elite he comes from."
De Blasio, who ended his own campaign for the Demcoratic presidential nomination in September, has endorsed Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.
He told Sean Hannity on Wednesday night that comments Bloomberg made in a 2015 speech to the Aspen Institute show how "out of touch" Bloomberg is to people in his own city.
Video recently resurfaced of the speech, during which Bloomberg defended the controversial "stop and frisk" policing policy that has been slammed as targeting black and Latino people.
In the video, which Hannity played on the program, Bloomberg admitted the policy targeted minority "kids" and threw them "up against the wall" to frisk them.
De Blasio said "oh, sure," when Hannity asked him if the comments seemed racist, and thanked him for playing the clip so "more people get to see who Mike Bloomberg really is."
"It made it harder for the police and the community to communicate and be on the same page," de Blasio said. "It created tons of pain for parents [and] grandparents trying to bring up their kids the right way."
Hannity later in the program said Sanders is "sincere" because he "believes this crap."
"You disagree with him," de Blasio replied, "but you don't doubt that what he is saying is the truth."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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