Despite widespread grief expressed by the public over both the assassination of John F. Kennedy and the tragic death of Princess Diana, Democratic presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg was indifferent to them, The Washington Free Beacon reported on Wednesday.
The former New York City mayor's remarks on these tragedies were made during a 1999 interview with his alma mater Johns Hopkins University for an oral history project in which he expressed his belief that the media and public reaction was overblown and that the events themselves were not that important.
Bloomberg recalled that his life on campus went on normally after Kennedy was killed in 1963, except "I had planned a big fraternity dance in the gym, and we had spent all our budget hiring James Brown and the Flames to play, and then Kennedy got shot and we canceled the dance and couldn't get our deposit back."
He added that Kennedy "was not popular" and is remembered fondly only because he was assassinated. "There were stories that he wouldn't even get the Democratic nomination, much less get re-elected," Bloomberg said. "How quickly we forget."
In the interview, Bloomberg was just as callous about the death of Princess Diana, recalling that he was in the Hamptons the day it happened in 1997 when a friend said, "Nothing will ever be the same again."
Bloomberg recalled replying that "it's just one life. There's a lot of people that died today," adding in retrospect that the world was "never the same again for Princess Diana, but everybody else went on."
The Bloomberg campaign declined to comment on the interview, although it said he has regretted much of what he said as a younger man.
Brian Freeman ✉
Brian Freeman, a Newsmax writer based in Israel, has more than three decades writing and editing about culture and politics for newspapers, online and television.
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