During Bloomberg’s debut on the Democratic debate stage, the former New York City mayor fielded attacks from every candidate over his past embrace of Republicans, ardent defense of capitalism and stop-and-frisk policing tactic.
In one particularly tense exchange, Warren grilled him over the corporate culture at his Manhattan-based financial news services company, Bloomberg L.P., in light of allegations he made derogatory remarks toward women who are now barred from discussing the comments by non-disclosure agreements.
When asked during the debate about his past remarks, including allegedly telling a former female employee, “I would do you in a second,” Bloomberg deflected. He said he has “no tolerance for the kind of behavior that the ‘Me, Too’ movement has exposed” and pivoted to an accounting of the numerous women he’s empowered at his company and as mayor.
“I hope you heard what his defense was. ‘I’ve been nice to some women.’ That just doesn’t cut it,” Warren said in response. “The mayor has to stand on his record. And what we need to know is exactly what’s lurking out there.”
She demanded he say whether he would “release all of those women from those nondisclosure agreements, so we can hear their side of the story” and repeatedly asked him how many such agreements exist.
He insisted there are “very few,” but wouldn’t specify beyond that, and added that he was never personally accused of any wrongdoing, “other than maybe they didn’t like a joke I told.”
In the end, Bloomberg would not agree to release the women from the legal agreements.
„You know you are a winner when you are drawing attacks from all the candidates. Everyone came to destroy Mike tonight. It didn’t happen. Everyone wanted him to lose his cool. He didn’t do it. He was the grown-up in the room,” his campaign manager, Kevin Sheekey said after the debate ended. He said Bloomberg “was just warming up” and hinted he would do better at the next debate in South Carolina on Tuesday.
Source: politico.com
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