De Blasio rips Bloomberg in Hannity interview: ‘He’s got no clue’

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) ripped Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg late Wednesday, telling told Fox News host Sean Hannity that he believes the billionaire’s comments about the stop-and-frisk policy he embraced when he served as the city’s mayor are “racist” and that he has “no clue.”

The perspective came after Hannity played an unearthed clip of a 2015 speech at the Aspen Institute, where Bloomberg said the policy included police officers taking “kids” and throwing them “up against the wall” in an effort to disarm them.

“Is that comment racist to you?” Hannity asked de Blasio.

“Oh, sure, Sean,” replied de Blasio. “Thank you for playing that for your millions of viewers, because now more people get to see who Mike Bloomberg really is.”

A 2013 court ruling while Bloomberg was New York City mayor concluded the policy was racially discriminatory. The city appealed the ruling, but the effort was abandoned after de Blasio took over for Bloomberg the following year.

“He’s totally out of touch with the people of his own city when he says that. It’s derogatory, it’s unfair, it’s not truthful,” de Blasio continued. “But on top of that, what happened? It made it harder for the police and the community to communicate and be on the same page. It created tons of pain for parents [and] grandparents trying to bring up their kids the right way.”

De Blasio, a staunch critic of his predecessor, endorsed Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-Vt.) presidential campaign after dropping his own White House bid last September.

“When you watch Michael Bloomberg on that debate stage, he’s got no clue what everyday people are going through. He doesn’t care to know,” de Blasio argued late Wednesday. “When he was mayor here, if you tried to talk about what’s happening in neighborhoods, what was happening to everyday people, all he could think about was that elite he comes from.”

The Hannity interview is de Blasio’s second on the program in the past year.

Bloomberg is not on the ballot in Saturday’s South Carolina primary, but will be on ballot on Super Tuesday, when voters in 14 states will go to the polls.