Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg has released his tax plan, under which he would pay nearly $5 billion less under his wealth tax than he would under Senator Bernie Sanders’s proposal. That’s according to a CBS analysis, which found Bloomberg’s plan would also generate far less government revenue than Sanders’s plan. This comes as Bloomberg continues to face questioning about newly surfaced audio in which he defends the New York City Police Department’s controversial “stop-and-frisk” policies in 2015 at the Aspen Institute. This is Bloomberg being questioned by reporters about the audio Wednesday.
Michael Bloomberg: “I don’t think those words reflect what — how I led the most diverse city in the nation. And I apologized for the practice and the pain that it caused.”
Reporter: “But why did you say it?”
Michael Bloomberg: “It was five years ago. And, you know, it’s just not the way that I think. And it does not the way — doesn’t reflect what I do every day.”
New York Times columnist Charles Blow writes in a new opinion piece, “What Bloomberg did as mayor amounted to a police occupation of minority neighborhoods, a terroristic pressure campaign, with little evidence that it was accomplishing the goal of sustained, long-term crime reduction. … No amount of Democrats’ anti-Trump fear and panic will ever erase what Bloomberg did. … If Democrats cast aside all of these [other] candidates in favor of Bloomberg and his wealth, I fear they will be making it harder to defeat Trump in November.”