On Sunday, White House Counselor Kellyanne Conway appeared on “Fox News Sunday” with host Chris Wallace.
During the segment, Wallace asked Conway about 2020 Democratic presidential candidate and billionaire Michael Bloomberg.
“There’s been a war of words over the past week certainly between the president and former New York City –” Wallace said before Conway interjected, saying:
The war of words is between Michael Bloomberg and the African American community. The way he feels about people is so demeaning. The policy may have been “Stop and Frisk,” but the philosophy was to castigate and denigrate people of color, and it’s a disgrace.
Wallace jumped in, saying, “You’ve anticipated where we’re going to go because one of the statements back and forth had to do with these these comments that Michael Bloomberg made about Stop and Frisk in 2015.”
Wallace then played a recently released audio clip in which Bloomberg talks about crime and the Stop and Frisk policy: “The way you should get the guns out of the kids’ hands is to throw them up against the wall and frisk them.”
He also shared what President Trump tweeted after the audio was released, which was: “Wow, Bloomberg is a total racist!”
Wallace played a clip from an interview Trump have to Geraldo Rivera regarding the issue in which the president stated: “You couldn’t go to your house. They were stopping you every day. What Bloomberg did to black, to the black community was a disgrace.”
“But Kellyanne, candidate Donald Trump supported what Bloomberg did with Stop and Frisk,” Wallace noted, then played a clip from the very first debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump from 2016.
Trump said of Bloomberg’s policy at the time:
[It] was continued on by Mayor Bloomberg, and it was terminated by [our] current mayor – but Stop and Frisk had a tremendous impact on the safety of New York City, tremendous beyond belief. So, when you say it has no impact, it really did. It had a very, very big impact.
This led to the following exchange during which Conway seemingly tried to imply that the president is playing a trick to catch the media:
WALLACE: So, why was Stop and Frisk tremendous then, and it’s racist now?CONWAY: The president is toying with everybody by saying, “Oh, had he said something like that, had you unearthed videotape like that of him,” everybody would say “racist! racist!” But look at all the people who are saying, “You know what, I think Michael Bloomberg learned his lesson. He’s apologized. That was so long ago.” Chris, it was a few years ago as mayor of New York, and it wasn’t just Stop and Frisk. He said redlining, that canceling redlining started the financial crisis. The African American community weren’t the perpetrators of that financial crisis. Many of them were the victims. What is he talking about? This billionaire who’s made his life’s wealth in the financial services industry is now saying that?And look, it’s not that Michael Bloomberg was burning a bra, burning the flag at Woodstock when he was a teenager. He said these several years ago, a few short years ago as mayor of New York, and it’s the way he said it. He said you can basically Xerox the description of male minorities between the ages of 16 and 25 and hand it over to the cops. That is somebody who looks at people beneath him differently, and we can’t have that, and I cannot, I literally this week – and I’ve got pretty thick shock absorbers, my friend – I cannot believe all the prominent African Americans I’ve seen publicly say, “I think we can support Bloomberg because after all, he’s electable. He’s the one who can beat Donald Trump.” Electability was the calling card for Hillary Clinton four years ago, for Joe Biden this entire year. Electability means nothing if the person looks at a large constituency of your electorate, let alone this country, that way.
Conway went on to talk about the way Bloomberg has allegedly spoken about women. This led to a back and forth in which Wallace asked Conway if President Trump could push back on Bloomberg’s alleged history of “sexist comments” when the president himself has been accused of making “sexist comments.”
Conway pivoted, saying that “you don’t have to wait for an election to be offended by” what Bloomberg has been reported to have said.
“The comments he’s made about women, the lawsuits, that is all fair game … because we want to know the person behind the half a billion dollars worth of ads…” Conway said.
When pressed about Trump’s “sexist comments,” Conway said, “Oh, please. First of all, I’ve been working by his side for four years. He’s the best boss I’ve ever had.”
“Is this any worse than the Access Hollywood tape?” Wallace asked.
“It’s far worse. Oh my goodness, it’s far worse,” Conway replied. “And by the way, that was fully litigated. That happened on October 7th; he won a month later.”
When Wallace pressed further, Conway dug in, and went on to criticize Bloomberg’s alleged sexist treatment of his female employees.
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