In a video from 2019, Democratic presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York City, is seen describing transgender people as “it” and “some guy in a dress.”

The video surfaced this week as the Bloomberg campaign released a video featuring out fashion designer Isaac Mizrahi promoting Bloomberg's “sensitivity” on the issue of LGBT youth.

Bloomberg made the comments at a forum hosted by the Bermuda Business Development Agency in Manhattan. He was not a presidential candidate at the time.

“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. “They care about health care, they care about education, they care about safety, and all of those kinds of things.”

“And so you can understand where somebody like Trump comes from; you can understand when you look at the Democratic Party, they are so far left that two years ago there was nobody on their side who would take these positions, and today virtually all the candidates for president of the Democratic Party are so progressive. I don’t know what progressive means.”

The video was posted on YouTube shortly after the March event but received little attention.

In response to an inquiry from BuzzFeedNews, a spokesperson for the candidate released a statement.

“Mike understands that the transgender community has been under attack for decades and the advance of rights has not been equal. In April 2002, during his first year as mayor, Mike signed a sweeping transgender civil rights bill into law. His company provides comprehensive health care coverage for his transgender employees. As president, he has a comprehensive plan to secure rights for transgender Americans, including passing the Equality Act, ensuring transgender people have access to affirming health care and working to end the crisis of violence against transgender women. Mike is running to defeat Donald Trump and reverse the many policies he has implemented that attack the rights of the transgender community,” the person said.

Bloomberg has made similar comments in the past. In 2016, he said that a good salesperson can sell “the concept that some man wearing a dress should be in a locker room with their daughter” to Midwest voters.

Bloomberg entered the crowded Democratic field late and made a splash by spending $400 million of his own money on ads. His poll numbers among Democrats have climbed enough to qualify him for today's Democratic debate in Nevada.