It’s mayor vs. mayor.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio put his predecessor, 2020 candidate Michael Bloomberg, on blast Thursday morning after the billionaire said during a CNN town hall that “hopefully” de Blasio had “learned from my mistake” with regards to Bloomberg’s stop-and-frisk policy. De Blasio repealed the policy, which was (by Bloomberg’s own admission) designed to target black and Hispanic New Yorkers, after he was elected in 2013.
“Everyone, this is the level of wealth-backed, self-centered delusion we got used to,” de Blasio tweeted. “His successor + thousands of others told him he was wrong FOR YEARS WHILE HE WAS MAYOR.”
In a follow-up tweet, the current mayor said that there was “a special narcissism to billionaires” like Bloomberg, who is self-funding his presidential campaign.
“Here’s what actually happened, @MikeBloomberg: I called for an end to your broken policies, got elected + changed them,” he wrote. “None of us needed to ‘learn’ what we already knew. The people had told us.”
Stu Loeser, a spokesperson for the Bloomberg campaign, fired back several hours later by noting that de Blasio had posted the tweets at 4 AM.
“So either @cnn replayed @MikeBloomberg’s town hall overnight or a thin-skinned New Yorker who routinely tries to delegitimize any media that covers him critically is watching @TiVo in his (our) executive mansion,” Loeser tweeted.
De Blasio endorsed 2020 frontrunner Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) in mid-February after ending his own presidential campaign. Since then, the mayor has been punching at the Vermont senator’s rivals.
“Hey @PeteButtigieg, try to not be so smug when you just got your ass kicked,” de Blasio tweeted after the former South Bend, Indiana mayor came in third in the Nevada caucus last weekend.
“You know how we form a winning coalition to beat Trump? With a true multi-racial coalition of working Americans: something @BernieSanders has proven he can do + you haven’t,” he added.
I just don’t understand the obsession with destroying the Dem candidates for POTUS. Between the BIden story and now this one, TPM is not helpful. Not at all.
BTW - there’s a lot of stuff going on with coronavirus this morning. But nothing here. Nothing at all mid-morning.
When they go low, we go low???
The news media didn’t see the same presser we did, apparently. One example.
Has there even BEEN a story on TPM about the presser? I see nothing on my front page…
Yes. Click on “news”. There were a couple or three posted last night.