Bloomberg Faces Backlash After Derisive Remarks About Transgender People Resurface

Mike Bloomberg came under fire from LGBTQ rights advocates this week after a 2019 video in which he made crude and derisive remarks about the transgender community resurfaced.

The video, which was shot at a New York forum hosted by the Bermuda Business Development Agency last year, appeared in a Tuesday BuzzFeed News report . In the footage, Bloomberg who is running for the Democratic presidential nomination describe a transgender person as some guy wearing a dress and it in a discussion about politicians calling for trans-inclusive protections.

Just hours before the BuzzFeed article was published, Bloombergs campaign released a short vide o touting the Democratic presidential hopefuls support for LGBTQ youth and featuring designer Isaac Mizrahi, who is gay.

Queer supporters of Mike Bloomberg, how do you explain this to our transgender family and friends? Because they deserve a Democratic nominee that doesnt refer to them as it. pic.twitter.com/HNwuxDZzhf

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Queer supporters of Mike Bloomberg, how do you explain this to our transgender family and friends? Because they deserve a Democratic nominee that doesnt refer to them as it. pic.twitter.com/HNwuxDZzhf
H. Alan Scott / Sadie Pines (@HAlanScott) February 19, 2020

The 2019 video was, in many respects, startlingly similar to a 2016 clip shot at the University of Oxford in England. In the earlier footage, Bloomberg also refers to some man wearing a dress while describing a hypothetical transgender person.

The most recent video received a blistering response from media personalities and LGBTQ rights advocates, who condemned Bloombergs remarks as transphobic and appalling .

The Bloomberg campaign did not reply to HuffPosts request for comment on the video. However, in a statement issued to BuzzFeed News and NBC Tuesday , a spokesperson said that Bloomberg, as mayor of New York, had signed a sweeping transgender civil rights bill into law in 2002. It also pointed to his support for the Equality Act , a comprehensive anti-discrimination bill seen by many as the LGBTQ rights movements top legislative priority.

Mike is running to defeat [President] Donald Trump and reverse the many policies he has implemented that attack the rights of the transgender community, the statement continued.

Pointing to an increase in the number of fatal attacks against trans people last year, the Human Rights Campaign urged Bloomberg to apologize ahead of his first presidential debate Wednesday in Las Vegas.

We expect all pro-equality candidates, including Mayor Bloomberg, to create policy solutions to end the epidemic of violence our community faces, not use the same talking points our opponents use to dehumanize transgender people and justify their own hateful beliefs, HRC President Alphonso David said in an email to HuffPost.

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Transgender women arent he-she or it, theyre women, he continued. LGBTQ people are human and deserve to be treated with respect.