Mike Bloomberg in 2016: Uneducated Young People Support Bernie Sanders

Democrat presidential hopeful and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg claimed in 2016 that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) only has the support of young people across the nation because they do not understand what he wants to implement.

The resurfaced footage came from a December 2016 discussion Bloomberg had at Oxford University’s Saïd School of Business, where he discussed an array of topics including socialism, Sanders, transgender rights, and Donald Trump.

Bloomberg said:

I don’t mean to knock young people — I wish I was one again — but young people listened to [Bernie Sanders] and they said, ‘Yeah, Democratic: That’s good. Socialism: Yeah, that’s that social media stuff.’ Because our kids no longer learn civics in school, they longer study Western history, they no longer read Western literature.

“We are trying to change and dumb down the system and if you don’t know what happened in the past you’re going to have to relive it,” Bloomberg continued.

Bloomberg went on to express his opinions about Sanders and socialism, saying “We’ve tried socialism, it doesn’t work.” He said:

The solution to our problems is more open borders not closed borders. The solution to our problems is to improve education, not to try to penalize people because they are successful. If you don’t have successful people you’re never going to have the wherewithal to support to help those who are not. We’ve tried socialism, it doesn’t work.

Bloomberg then claimed it is “extremists” who are going to shape political culture:

It’s very dangerous, the world we’re going into. You see both the left and the right coming up here, and the middle is getting unfortunately not listened to anymore and it’s the extremists that are going to shape the political culture if we’re not careful going forward.

“And we’ve had extremism before, particularly on this continent, and it didn’t work out very well,” Bloomberg concluded.

Asked whether he still stands by his 2016 statements, Bloomberg spokesperson Stu Loeser said, “The Bernie who ran in 2016 called himself a truth-teller. Even Bernie wouldn’t honestly say that about himself anymore — let alone his allies.”