DIVISIVE

Michael Bloomberg in 2016 Blamed Obama Administration for Race Divisions

In 2016, the former NY mayor asked, “[W]e’re just finishing up eight years with our first Black president. Why are we more separated than we were before?”

A day after Michael Bloomberg attended a campaign rally at Buffalo Soldiers national museum in Houston, Texas, touting signs that said, “Mike for black America,” a video of a 2016 speech has emerged in which he blamed former President Barack Obama for race divisions. The clip, first tweeted by political pundit Benjamin Dixon, shows the former New York mayor saying he thought America was more segregated than it had been in a dozen years before blaming Obama. “And yet we’re just finishing up eight years with our first black president. Why are we more separated than we were before?” he asks. “Why, during the Obama administration, didn’t we pull together? Ask the president. That’s his job really to pull people together.” Bloomberg has struggled to find footing among black voters after endorsing a controversial ‘stop and frisk’ program in New York that was seen as targeting blacks and minorities.