The Truth Behind Mike Bloomberg

Elijah Nichols, Reporter

Mike Bloomberg, a previous debate qualifier and recent democratic presidential candidate drop out, was recorded last year referring to LGBTQIA+ and transgender people as “he, she, or it” and “some guy in a dress” as well as mocking the 2020 Democrats and presidential runners for focusing on transgender and LGBTQIA+ issues.

On March 21 2019, Bloomberg said, “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 went on to argue that the Democratic Party has rapidly become more progressive and is now so far left that “we are focusing on many things that have little relevance to people.”

“And so you can understand where somebody like Trump comes from,” Bloomberg said at the forum last year, which took place before he announced his nominal presidential run. “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 do not know what progressive means.”

“If you want to know if somebody is a good salesman, give him the job of going to the Midwest and picking a town and selling to that town the concept that some man wearing a dress should be in a locker room with their daughter,” Bloomberg said in December 2016 at an event at the University of Oxford in England.

Bloomberg was also being accused of adopting racist and prejudiced policies during his time as mayor of New York, including Bloomberg’s championing of stop and frisk which primarily targeted minorities- especially African Americans.

Bloomberg, who entered the race late, focused his attention on the massive block of delegates that were up for grabs on Super Tuesday. The states that voted on March 3 include the two largest in the country, California, and Texas, among others.

Bloomberg did use his personal wealth to blanket the airwaves, Bloomberg’s TV spending dwarfed that of all the other candidates at over $600 million in ads and campaign propaganda.

Bloomberg has been in the center of the heat after people came forward in the #MeToo movement as he forced many women to sign non-disclosure agreements, which is causing many people to question what he did to the women to make them sign. The allegations severely hurt his chances of picking up new voters. In the recent debate, Warren and Sanders both went after Bloomberg for his lack of respect for women by questioning why so many women in his company had to sign non-disclosure agreements. 

Bloomberg’s campaign turned its focus on Sanders, who is fresh off winning the popular vote in Iowa and the contests in New Hampshire and Nevada. He was favored in several Super Tuesday states where Bloomberg appeared on ballots for the first time. 

Bloomberg then ran strong anti-Sanders and Warren propaganda. Although Bloomberg running such a campaign can lead to him be put under more pressure for another woman related problem.

After dropping out of the race, he threw his support behind Joe Biden the following Wednesday saying “I will not walk away from the most important political fight of my life, and I hope you won’t walk away either, I’ve always believed that defeating Donald Trump starts with uniting behind the candidate with the best shot to do it, and after yesterday’s vote, it is clear that candidate is my friend and a great American, Joe Biden.”

Biden posted an appreciative tweet saying “I can’t thank you enough for your support—and for your tireless work on everything from gun safety reform to climate change. This race is bigger than candidates and bigger than politics. It’s about defeating Donald Trump, and with your help, we’re gonna do it” and he would be counting on Bloomberg’s help to defeat President Trump.

Bloomberg’s defeat can be summarized in one key reason. He was never able to escape a set of political severe vulnerabilities that his advisers identified from the outset, including his long record of supporting stop-and-frisk policing and numerous accusations made by women about harassment and gender-based discrimination by Mr. Bloomberg and his company. With his past being so controversial, it was apparent to see that he could never pull enough votes to beat the other democratic candidates.