Here we go again: Warren Mayor Jim Fouts caught on tape making disgusting comments in private.
This time, the mayor of Michigan’s third-largest city is heard offering a crude commentary about abused women while headed to an event at a shelter to support victims of domestic violence.
“I want to actually meet some abused women. I’m available as a big brother, or a big f*cker,” Fouts said.
“Need a woman that’s maybe about 35 that’s abused. You know, if she’s open for some abuse from the mayor (laughs).”
The tape was first obtained by FOX2 News, which broadcast the audio Thursday night. The audio recording was secretly made by a high-ranking city official who was in a car with the mayor on the way to the Turning Point shelter in Mount Clemens. The conversation apparently dates back to sometime during Fouts’ second term in office (2011-15).
Fouts continues to deny that it is his voice on the many tapes that have surfaced over the past two-plus years that contain offensive remarks about a wide array of people. But the person speaking on each of the recordings sounds exactly like Fouts, who has a very distinctive voice. And in this latest tape, he refers to himself as “the mayor.”
In other recordings the mayor has: used the N-word and referred to blacks as chimpanzees; said that handicapped children – “retards” — should be locked in cages or euthanized; called older women “dried-up c*nts;” complained that the treatment he received from the press was like being raped; suggested that a U.S. senator with a developmentally disabled daughter should have had the “mongoloid” child aborted; marveled at how easy it is to secure a 16-year-old prostitute in the Netherlands; and labeled homosexuals as “fags.”
In each case, the tone of Fouts’ voice suggests that he harbored no concerns at all that his comments, spoken among his staff, were beyond the pale.
In 2017, a voice-recognition expert concluded that the person speaking on the first tapes that were leaked to the media matched Fouts’ voice. When a FOX2 reporter confronted Fouts earlier this week, she asked:
“Is it you on those tapes? It sounds just like you.”
“You know that’s your opinion, it’s more of the same,” Fouts responded. “Bye.”
The 76-year-old mayor is up for re-election in November and his top aides staunchly stand by him, insisting the tapes will not be a campaign issue.
In January, city attorney Raechel Badalamenti wrote in an email that Fouts “is a trailblazer for equality and diversity, period.”
