Michael Bloomberg’s team said the former New York City mayor’s comments about women in past years were “wrong,” according to a statement given to The New York Times. “Mike has come to see that some of what he has said is disrespectful and wrong,” spokesman Stu Loeser said. “He believes his words have not always aligned with his values and the way he has led his life.” Bloomberg’s comments about women have re-surfaced amid his potential 2020 run. Some of his degrading comments were memorialized in a gift from his then-colleagues collating his one-liners. “If women wanted to be appreciated for their brains, they’d go to the library instead of to Bloomingdale’s,” one of the lines in the pamphlet read. During his 2001 mayoral run, he dismissed the pamphlet’s remarks as “borscht belt jokes.”

While Bloomberg has reportedly championed the #MeToo movement and thanked women “who have courageously spoken out,” he also expressed doubt about the sexual-misconduct allegations against former CBS anchor Charlie Rose. “You know, is it true?” Bloomberg told the Times in 2018. “You look at people that say it is, but we have a system where you have — presumption of innocence is the basis of it.”