Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez warned that electing Mike Bloomberg in November would pave the way for another candidate who could be “even worse” than President Trump.
The freshman lawmaker said she thinks it’s “not a good idea” to put the former three-term New York mayor in the White House even if he is the candidate who could beat Trump.
“We obviously have to beat Trump,” she told “The Breakfast Club” show on Power 105.1 AM on Tuesday. “But if we beat Trump and go back to the same policies that we had before, a worse Trump is going to come. A Trump that’s more sophisticated, whose fascism is less obvious, is going to come and things could get even worse.”
Ocasio-Cortez, who has spoken at Sen. Bernie Sanders’ campaign rallies, noted how Bloomberg’s controversial policies like stop-and-frisk and his comments about how ending the discriminatory practice of redlining contributed to the 2008 financial meltdown are coming attractions of a Bloomberg presidency.
“A lot of people don’t know Bloomberg. We’re here in New York City. We lived under his tenure as mayor,” she said. “We know exactly what he did. This is part of what he’s doing when he comes in, swoops in super late in the game with billions of dollars at his disposal and is able to kind of shower the airwaves with his cash.”
Bloomberg, whose worth is estimated at $65 billion, has spent more than $400 million on a nationwide campaign ad blitz since entering the race in November.
AOC said despite his apologies for using the practice of stop-and-frisk, Bloomberg has not done enough in the eyes of minority voters to become a presidential candidate.
“I think that redemption in politics is an acceptable thing, but you have to earn it,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “It needs to be proven through years of work and evolution for the right thing.”
“This is what happened with Bloomberg. He was down with stop-and-frisk. He fought for it in the courts, the courts overturned it as unconstitutional. He still fought it, defended it after him being mayor and then … five minutes before he runs for president, he says, ‘Okay, maybe this wasn’t the right policy.'”