Democrats in Bloomberg's first debate play whack-a-Mike

Mogul hits the bump

No, President Trump, Michael Bloomberg didn't stand on a box in his first presidential debate. He just looked at times like he wanted to crawl inside of one.

Bloomberg's riches and record of impolitic comments came under relentless attack from the five other candidates on the Las Vegas stage. The most stinging came when Elizabeth Warren, prosecutor style, challenged him to release from nondisclosure agreements the women who sued his company for sexual harassment allegations.

“The question is: Are the women bound by being muzzled by you? You could release them from that immediately,” Warren said. "We are not going to beat Trump with a man who has — who knows how many — NDAs with women,” she asserted.

He stood by keeping the NDAs secret, rolled his eyes and tried to put his behavior in a benign-sounding context. "None of them accuse me of doing anything other than maybe they didn’t like a joke I told," Bloomberg said.

Warren had already described Bloomberg's brand of humor to the audience. “We're running against … a billionaire who calls women 'fat broads' and 'horse-faced lesbians,' and, no, I'm not talking about Donald Trump," she said. Those insults were attributed in a book compiled by Bloomberg's employees decades ago to his take on the British royal family.

Bloomberg's opponents also ripped him for his stop-and-frisk policing policy as New York mayor, with Joe Biden saying its result was "throwing 5 million black men up against the wall.” Bloomberg insisted he wound it down, though that happened well into a legal fight. He was accused of trying to buy the presidency, and Bernie Sanders made it personal. "Mike Bloomberg owns more wealth than the bottom 125 million Americans. That’s wrong. That’s immoral,” Sanders said. Bloomberg countered that he worked hard and is giving it all away to make the country better.

Constantly on the defensive, Bloomberg got little chance to show a presence that could complement his bankroll and back up his boast that he would be Trump's toughest opponent. His closing statement was about his managerial skills. The wealthiest candidate for president ever will get another chance in next week's debate in South Carolina. As for his debut performance, a Republican strategist, Bruce Mehlman, tweeted: "Bloomberg brought a wallet to a knife fight."

No quitting when behind

Before the debate, Bloomberg's handlers argued it's down to a two-person race, between him and Sanders. But it was very much a spirited and, at times, rowdy debate with Biden, Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar and Warren getting in their sharpest licks at one another.

Warren, who preached unity after her poor New Hampshire primary showing, went after everyone. She defended her "Medicare for All" plan as superior to Sanders' and the public-option versions by the moderates. Klobuchar's is "like a Post-it note, 'insert plan here,’ ” she scolded. Buttigieg's is "not a plan, it’s a PowerPoint.”

Buttigieg, deriding Sanders and Bloomberg, said one threatened to “burn down” the Democratic Party and the other was trying to buy it. He called them “the two most polarizing figures on this stage.”

Buttigieg skewered Klobuchar for not knowing the name of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador during an interview last week. Klobuchar responded with indignation: "Are you trying to say that I’m dumb? Are you mocking me, Pete? … People sometimes forget names.” Warren jumped in to defend her, saying "it happens to everybody."

Sanders talked up his plan that would require publicly traded corporations, and the biggest private companies, to issue 20% of company stock to their employees. Bloomberg said that sounded like communism.

Biden bridled at Warren's charge that he was too eager to be friendly with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Describing McConnell as supporting Trump's unsubstantiated allegations against him and his son on Ukraine, the former vice president said: "The way he’s gone after me — this new Republican Party — after me, after my son, after my family, I don’t need to be told I’m a friend of Mitch McConnell’s. Mitch McConnell has been the biggest pain in my neck for a long, long time.”

Highlights and lowlights

So Bloomberg played defense, Warren displayed her debating skills, and Joe Biden might have been lost a bit in the sauce. Newsday's Laura Figueroa assesses the approach and impact of these candidates, as well as Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg. 

The Associated Press also checked factual claims voiced in the debate.

Hearts and glowers

In advance of the debate, Sanders' campaign went on the offensive over his post-heart attack refusal to release his medical records, accusing critics of being part of a "smear" effort and likening it to demands to see Barack Obama's U.S. birth certificate.

Overreaching in a CNN interview, Sanders' national press secretary Briahna Joy Gray said without any basis that another 78-year-old candidate, Bloomberg, also had a history of "heart attacks."

"It's really telling, given that none of the same concern is being demonstrated for Michael Bloomberg, who is the same age as Bernie Sanders, who has suffered heart attacks in the past," Gray said. Bloomberg's campaign manager, Kevin Sheekey, labeled that "a lie," adding: "Bernie Sanders is the Trump of the left. I honestly can't tell the difference in their campaigns.”

Bloomberg has said he underwent a coronary stent placement in 2000 for a blocked artery. Such procedures are commonly used to prevent heart attacks, as well as to treat those who have suffered them. Gray admitted later Tuesday that she "misspoke" on CNN, adding that Bloomberg "underwent the same stent procedure as Bernie."

Sanders received two stents after his heart attack in October. The previous month, he pledged to release his medical records. During a CNN forum on Tuesday night, he said, "I don't think we will." He put out summary letters from three doctors that said he was in good health.

Janison: Iowa without end

The fight for the Democratic nomination has moved beyond Iowa, but not completely, writes Newsday's Dan Janison.

Only 41 delegates were at stake, out of more than 4,700 nationally, but the cascading foul-ups in the reporting of results has left unsettled whether Buttigieg barely beat Sanders or vice versa. They, too, were the top two in New Hampshire.

But the shape of the race is shifting, with Nevada and South Carolina coming up and polls showing a Sanders surge. On March 3 comes Super Tuesday, when Democrats in 14 states will vote and Bloomberg will be on the ballots for the first time. The whole primary dynamic could shift at any point.

A Trump-ocrat is born

Sometimes it seems like James Comey is the monster Trump keeps seeing under his bed. In a tweet defending his clemency for former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who was serving a 14-year sentence for corruption, Trump again called the punishment "Another Comey and gang deal!"

Never mind that Comey, who the president fired as FBI director, had nothing to do with the prosecution or sentencing and was a lawyer in private practice at the time. Never mind that Blagojevich was a Democrat, which doesn't fit the profile of those who Trump believes, himself included, got the "dirty cop" treatment. Blagojevich's wife and others sold Trump on that connection because the ex-governor's prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, was a Comey friend.

Now that Blagojevich is a free man for the first time in eight years, don't look for him to correct Trump. He portrayed himself as "a freed political prisoner" who had been unfairly persecuted. “I'm a Trump-ocrat,” he said.

Five Illinois House Republicans — Adam Kinzinger, Mike Bost, Darin LaHood, John Shimkus and Rodney Davis — said they were "disappointed" by Trump's move.

POTUS still has urge to purge

Trump's continued his post-impeachment purge of officials seen as out of lockstep with his agenda, albeit more gently, with the exit of John Rood, undersecretary of defense for policy at the Pentagon.

Rood warned internally against withholding military aid to Ukraine last year. CNN reported he differed with the administration on several issues, in addition to the handling of that aid.

Trump asked for the resignation and said on Twitter: "I would like to thank John Rood for his service to our Country, and wish him well in his future endeavors!" Just so there was no mistaking why, the comment came in a retweet by Trump of a reporter's story that stated Rood "faced pressure to resign from some who lost confidence in his ability to carry out Trump agenda."

OMG! MRB pays to TXT!

Bloomberg’s campaign is hiring more than 500 workers in California, the biggest Super Tuesday state, to post supporting messages daily on their personal social-media accounts and to send text messages about him to everyone in their phones’ contacts, The Wall Street Journal reported.

The "deputy digital organizers” will work 20 to 30 hours a week and receive $2,500 a month, according to documents reviewed by the Journal. The idea is to influence potential Bloomberg voters through people they know and trust, rather than relying on outreach from strangers.

It's not clear whether such messages would require labeling as sponsored content under Facebook’s disclosure rules. A campaign spokeswoman said they would not, describing them as a form of political organizing, rather than paid influencer content.

What else is happening:

• Trump is expected to name Richard Grenell, the American ambassador to Germany, to be the acting director of national intelligence, The New York Times reported. A combative Trump loyalist, he would be the first openly gay Cabinet-level official in the administration. In another first for the job, he has no experience in intelligence.
• Andrew Yang, who quit the Democratic race after the New Hampshire primary, is joining CNN as a political commentator.
• Salvatore Lippa, 57, of Greece in western New York, was charged with threatening the lives of Rep. Adam Schiff and Sen. Charles Schumer over Trump's impeachment.
• E. Jean Carroll, who accuses Trump in a lawsuit of raping her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in the 1990s, said she was fired from her job as an advice columnist at Elle magazine because of Trump's insults against her. Elle's publisher had no comment.
• Sanders had to be talked out of a primary challenge to Obama in 2012, The Atlantic reports. Harry Reid, then the Senate majority leader, intervened after getting wind of it.
• Fact-checks on Buttigieg by The New York Times and ABC News suggest he's used misleading stats to defend his record on racial matters from when he was mayor of South Bend, Indiana, and has overstated support from black leaders and public figures.
• Washington's The Hill newspaper reviewed stories on Ukraine and the Bidens by since-departed columnist John Solomon. It concluded that Solomon amplified an inaccurate, one-sided narrative fed to him by Rudy Giuliani, with Solomon's own Ukraine-involved attorneys reinforcing it. The columns set in motion Trump's demands to investigate the Bidens, The Washington Post writes.