Warren hits Bloomberg while he's down
Elizabeth Warren spent Wednesday night pummeling Mike Bloomberg on the debate stage. On Thursday morning, she swung even harder.
The Massachusetts senator expanded on her criticism of the billionaire former New York mayor, driving home her attacks on his past comments about women, record on law enforcement and his request that other candidates step aside so that he can take on Donald Trump in November.
“Yesterday, Mayor Bloomberg announced that everyone should drop out of the race except himself and Bernie Sanders, and they should decide who the nominee will be,” Warren said Thursday on “The View.” “Well, I take exception to that. I’ve been told to sit down and be quiet enough in my life. I’m ready to stay in this fight.”
The Massachusetts senator enjoyed the most talking time during Wednesday’s Las Vegas debate, followed by the other female candidate on the stage, Amy Klobuchar. Warren launched an early strike on Bloomberg over the unknown number of non-disclosure agreements he has with people who have accused him of harassment as well as allegations that he has called women “fat broads” and “horse-faced lesbians."
Bloomberg, who had been steadily climbing in the polls on the back of a multi-million dollar advertising blitz, stumbled badly under the barrage of criticism from Warren and others on stage. His campaign manager conceded Thursday that "Mike's got to get his legs under him."
Warren, who attacked Bloomberg on Wednesday for “muzzling” his accusers with non-disclosure agreements, continued kicking the former mayor on Thursday, saying the former mayor “just shoveled some of his money in to cover it up.”
“I hope you heard that part last night where he said, ‘Oh, all that I was ever accused of was telling a few bad jokes.' Really?” Warren said. “We cannot let him get away with that. Too many men have gotten away with that for far too long, and it stops now.”
Bloomberg campaign manager Kevin Sheekey jumped to his defense Thursday morning, calling non-disclosure agreements “complicated.”
“Mike is running, not employees with grievances against other employees in the company,” Sheekey said on MSNBC. “We’re not putting them on trial. Elizabeth Warren wanted to put him on trial last night.”
Warren on Thursday jumped with ease from Bloomberg's alleged issues with women to his halting defense of the controversial stop-and-frisk policing practices he championed in New York. Warren called his apology for the city's stop-and-frisk policy, a practice that in 2013 a federal judge ruled as unconstitutional, “wholly wrong.”
“So to suddenly, years later, days before he announces that he wants to be president of the whole United States, he suddenly comes up with, ‘Oh, I’m so sorry that I had a plan that inadvertently hurt people,'” Warren said. “No, that is just simply not good enough.”
Warren continued: “It reveals his character. It reveals his understanding of race in America. Look, I am not a person of color. I have not lived with that. I have not been thrown across the hood of a car in my own neighborhood, but I try to learn from the people who have, and it is clear that what Mayor Bloomberg has learned so far is that he can hire enough ads, have enough money that he can insulate himself from any recognition of what his actions did to other human beings. And it was wrong and he has not accounted for it.”
Unlike Warren, Klobuchar spent Thursday morning lamenting that Wednesday's debate had grown too adversarial between candidates — despite her heated exchanges with South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg — and focused too little on President Donald Trump. But Klobuchar, too, found the opportunity to whack Bloomberg too appealing to pass up.
“I was actually one of the ones, maybe the only one, that kept saying he should be on the debate stage, because otherwise, he’s going to be beating us on the air waves,” Klobuchar said on MSNBC's "Morning Joe." “And he needs to be on the debate stage because otherwise, all people see are glitzy, nice 30 second or 60 second ads. That’s not an even playing field, and it is no way for democracy to be decided.”
Bloomberg, who has largely avoided television interviews, didn’t change his strategy Thursday after being pummeled in his debate debut. The former mayor has remained relatively quiet as of Thursday morning, posting an edited debate clip on Twitter where he asks the other candidates, “I’m the only one here, I think, that’s ever started a business. Is that fair?”
The clip then flashes to the other candidates one by one, showing each with a dumbfounded expression and crickets playing in the background. It ends with Bloomberg responding to the edited silence, saying “OK.”
Bloomberg also took to Twitter after last night's performance, and instead of addressing the claims against him, posted that “the group of politicians” talked “because that’s what they’re good at.”
“They went on and on about what they could and should do,” the post said. “I have built. I have created actual change. I have gotten it done. That’s what I’ll do for America.”
Bloomberg's campaign confirmed Thursday that the former mayor will appear in next week's debate in South Carolina, an opportunity for the mayor to post a stronger showing ahead of Super Tuesday, where he has staked his campaign on performing well. Warren, on "The View," offered her prediction for Bloomberg's strategy between now and then.
“I’ll bet he’s reaching in his pocket and spending $100 million more on advertising to try and erase everyone’s memory of what happened last night,” she said.
