Michael Bloomberg is out with a new online ad featuring his years of speechifying in support of more gun control laws, and debuted the clip with post on Twitter. As it turns out, there’s one very important speech that Bloomberg gave that’s not featured in the new ad. In fact, even though it was recorded, he refused to allow the speech to be released.

I’ve been working on gun violence for over a decade. And as president, I will fight gun violence from every angle and do everything in my power to save lives. pic.twitter.com/clzxVaktTO

— Mike Bloomberg (@MikeBloomberg) December 6, 2019

While Bloomberg’s new campaign ad features speeches going back to 2006, the speech Michael Bloomberg doesn’t want you to see is far more recent.

On February 5th, 2015, in front of less than 400 people, Michael Bloomberg had a speaking gig at the Aspen Institute, a think tank in Colorado that sponsors a variety of speakers to the ski town. Ordinarily the various speeches and events are recorded or streamed live, but either way, the speeches are in the public domain and available for public consumption. Since the Aspen Institute is all about exchanging ideas, that makes sense, but Bloomberg did something unheard of and blocked the release of virtually every second of footage of his talk that had been recorded.

Why would a high profile guy like Bloomberg do something like that? Maybe because he knew how bad this sounded.

Appearing before nearly 400 people in Aspen on Feb. 5, the billionaire founder of Bloomberg L.P. argued that in order to save lives, police should seize guns from male minorities between ages 15 and 25.

“These kids think they’re going to get killed anyway because all their friends are getting killed,” Bloomberg said during the speech. “So they just don’t have any longterm focus or anything. It’s a joke to have a gun. It’s a joke to pull a trigger.”

Or maybe it was this bit that he wanted to keep from public consumption.

National media outlets latched onto that portion of the discussion, in which Bloomberg said one method to deal with the issue is to “throw them up against the wall and frisk them,” referring to the controversial stop-and-frisk tactics New York City implemented during Bloomberg’s tenure.

I suppose it could have been this part of his talk as well.

About 95 percent of murders are credited to young, male minorities, he claimed, adding that motives are usually associated with drugs or domestic disputes.

“One of the unintended consequences is people say, ‘Oh my God, you are arresting kids for marijuana. They’re all minorities,’” Bloomberg said. “Yes, that’s true. Why? Because we put all the cops in the minority neighborhoods. Yes, that’s true. Why do you do it? Because that’s where all the crime is.”

That was 2015 Mike Bloomberg. 2020’s Mike Bloomberg is an opponent of “stop and frisk” who bizarrely claims that no one ever asked him about the policy and whether or not he supported it until he ran for president.

2015 Mike Bloomberg was all about busting young black and brown guys for a little bit of weed if you couldn’t find a gun on them, but 2020’s Mike Bloomberg is all about criminal justice reform and making sure young minority men don’t go to prison for minor drug offenses.

You may be able to find some other inconsistencies between 2015 Mike Bloomberg and Bloomberg 2020 if you listen to the Bloomberg’s talk, which as it turns out is actually available online, at least in audio form.

Obviously that’s not the official recording. As it turns out, audio of the speech captured by one of the attendees leaked out on YouTube not long after Bloomberg demanded the official recording of the speech remain offline and unavailable, so you can hear the former mayor and current presidential candidate’s comments for yourself. The audio’s not that great, but not only is it clear enough to listen on your phone or laptop, with a little closed captioning it would make for pretty good content in an attack ad.

Michael Bloomberg says the way to make America safer is to disarm black and brown men under the age of 25, and to “throw them up against the wall” and frisk them if necessary. Michael Bloomberg says arresting minorities for low-level drug offenses is a good thing, because that means cops are doing their job. Michael Bloomberg: bad for minorities, bad for America. 

Michael Bloomberg is spending tens of millions of dollars on ads full of the speeches he wants you to hear. I’d appreciate your help in spreading the word about the speech he doesn’t want heard at all. I’ve queued up the speech to start when Bloomberg starts his gun control comments, but you can go back and listen to the entire speech at the link above.