Democratic presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg, who is described in a new campaign ad as “incredibly sensitive” to the LGBTQ community, described transgender people as an “he, she, or it” and “some guy in a dress” just eight months before he announced his campaign, BuzzFeed News reports. “If your conversation during a presidential election is about some guy wearing a dress and whether he, she, or it can go to the locker room with their daughter, that’s not a winning formula for most people,” Bloomberg said at a Manhattan forum hosted by the Bermuda Development Agency in March 2019, where the former New York mayor criticized Democratic candidates for talking about transgender protections.

He made a similar comment about a “man wearing a dress” in 2016. However, his remarks last year came during the early stages of the 2020 Democratic primary. Bloomberg reportedly said that Democratic candidates needed to avoid talking about transgender people and that their liberal stances ultimately led to Trump’s 2016 presidential win. Video of his comments resurfaced on the same day that Bloomberg’s campaign published a video ad featuring fashion designer Isaac Mizrahi declaring that “Mike is so incredibly sensitive” to LGBTQ rights.