Democratic presidential hopefuls ganged up on Michael Bloomberg in the billionaire former New York City mayor’s first Democratic presidential debate appearance, creating the fiercest debate yet.
Warren: “A billionaire who calls women ‘fat broads’ and ‘horse-faced lesbians'”
Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren came out swinging with an attack on Bloomberg minutes into the debate.
“I’d like to talk about who we’re running against: a billionaire who calls women ‘fat broads’ and ‘horse-faced lesbians.’ And no, I’m not talking about Donald Trump. I’m talking about Mayor Bloomberg,” Warren said.
“Democrats are not going to win if we have a nominee who has a history of hiding his tax returns, of harassing women, and of supporting racist polls like redlining and stop and frisk,” she continued.
Klobuchar: “I don’t think you look at Donald Trump and say we need someone richer”
Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar said that she is not going to bow out of the race “because a campaign memo from Mayor Bloomberg said this morning that the only way that we get a nominee is if we step aside for him,” a reference to an internal memo from Bloomberg’s team that said she, former Vice President Joe Biden, and former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg should drop out of the race to prevent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders from amassing a lead in nominating delegates.
“I don’t think you look at Donald Trump and say we need someone richer in the White House,” Klobuchar said.
Warren and Biden: Release women from nondisclosure agreements
After Bloomberg addressed allegations of inappropriate behavior toward women in the workplace, in part by saying that women are paid equally at his company and are given “big responsibilities,” Warren and Biden called on him to let women who signed nondisclosure agreements freely speak about their accusations.
“I hope you heard what his defense was: ‘I was nice to some women,'” Warren said. “He has got some number of women … to sign nondisclosure agreements both for sexual harassment and for gender discrimination in the workplace. So, Mr. Mayor, are you willing to release all of those women from those nondisclosure agreements so we can hear their side of the story?”
Biden agreed with Warren. “It’s easy. All the mayor has to do is say, ‘You are released from the nondisclosure agreement,’ period,” he said.
Bloomberg rolled his eyes as Warren made her point, declining to release the women from legal liability for breaking a nondisclosure agreement on live television.
That Bloomberg eyeroll pic.twitter.com/ODQaugDSOG
— Alex Thompson (@AlxThomp) February 20, 2020
Sanders: “Electing people to represent the wealthy and the powerful”
“We have the insane situation that billionaires today, if you can believe it, have an effective tax rate lower than the middle class,” Sanders said.
Bloomberg protested, saying that Sanders, as a senator, helped write the tax code.
“Not me,” Sanders said. “You and your campaign contributions electing people to represent the wealthy and the powerful.”
Biden: “He didn’t get a whole lot done”
The former vice president argued that Bloomberg was an ineffective mayor of New York and took a jab at his support for a “stop and frisk” policing policy.
“He didn’t get a whole lot done. He had stop and frisk, throwing close to 5 million young black men up against a wall,” Biden said. “And when we came along in our administration, President Obama, and said we’re going to send in a moderator to — a mediator, stop it, he said that’s unnecessary.”
Bloomberg later said in the debate that he was “embarrassed” by the stop-and-frisk policy.
Buttigieg: Not a Democrat
The former South Bend, Indiana, mayor took jabs at Bloomberg and Sanders at the same time.
“Let’s put forward somebody who’s actually a Democrat,” Buttigieg said, referencing Bloomberg’s shifting political affiliation over his years in public office. He switched from being a Democrat to run for mayor of New York as a Republican in 2001, became an independent in 2007, and went back to being a Democrat in 2018. Sanders, a self-described “democratic socialist,” is an independent senator in Congress.
He then criticized Bloomberg for spending great gobs of his own money on his presidential campaign.
“We shouldn’t have to choose between one candidate who wants to burn this party down and another candidate who wants to buy this party out. We can do better,” Buttigieg said.
