Michael Bloomberg's Dark And Terrible Life Story

Robert, Katy, and Cody discuss former New York Mayor and presidential candidate, Michael Bloomberg. Best Bloomberg Ever!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Worst Year Ever, a production of I Heart Radio.
Welcome Everything. Hey guys, welcome back to first Year Ever.

(00:25):
Thank you for welcoming. Bro. I'm Katie and us back.
I'm Cody Johnston and I am Robert fucking Evans. I
have decided to curse very loudly at the start of
this episode with no real goal in mind, really no
goal in mine. You're an anarchist, none whatsoever. I mean,

(00:45):
we heard it, the goal achieved. I would say if
your goal is at least someone just want the world
to do the mild obscenity version of burn, which is
nothing at all. Uh, guys, what do we have to
about today of the greatest man who will save us all?

(01:06):
You know, one of the things that's cool about what's
happened this last week is that if you think about
all of this as a virus movie and pretend all
of the candidates who just dropped out actually died, then
this is kind of like the opening crawl of a
zombie movie. UM. I hadn't thought of that, but you
raise a good point. We're talking about bloom Bloomberg, Bloomberg,

(01:32):
boom Blurg. I had an interesting interaction right before we
started recording a Bloomberg Canvasser was texting with me and
responding to me as we went back and forth. They
did not because he's a hot Candida. They did not
feel like responding to my questions about stopping frisk, which

(01:53):
we will get to, um. But but he did respond
to my questions about how he felt about the massive
amounts of sexual harassment allegations, and he said it was
a joke. It was a joke, and he didn't assault anybody.
I didn't say assault anyway. Actually, I'm not sure if

(02:13):
it was. He. I'm just as fair fun thing about
the it's a joke thing. Bloomberg has said both it's
a joke and also I apologize for the things that
I've said. UM. So, I don't know interesting, um, but
that I'm not here to rehash that interaction to say
that the words that we prepared starting with we're here

(02:36):
to celebrate the life of Mike Bloomer, the legend, the man,
and I think we should before we get into this,
acknowledge the elephant in the room, which is that some
period of months ago before Michael Bloomberg was in the race,
and that long distant, buried Hyperborean age. We agreed to
run political ads on the show because we all of money.

(03:00):
Actually we hate it, but we need it for real
stupid food looks. Our network wants to make money. Our
show continues if it makes money, so let we like money.
For a very variety of reasons, we we opted to
take We're not gonna run Trump ads because that I

(03:21):
just I don't want to advertise for fascists. But I
assumed that at least we could know. None of the
Democratic candidates are people that I would describe as a fascist,
with the exception of Tolci Gabred, but she has no money. Um.
And then Mike Bloomberg entered the race, and the question
became muddled. Um, and we are getting his ass and

(03:42):
we are getting his ads. But that presents us with
a rare and beautiful opportunity, which is to do an
episode about what a piece of ship Mike Bloomberg was
sponsored officially by Mike Bloomberg for president, So this everything
in this episode is signed off on by the Mike
Bloomberg campaign. Yeah, it's very funny. Um. We on some
More News recently did an episode about Mike Bloomberg, and

(04:03):
the whole bit was that I was paid by Mike Bloomberg. Uh,
and I would list off all the terrible things he
said and done, but like with a positive spin because
it was paid for by Mike Bloomberg and he's really good.
Um and uh, it's like falls apart of the episode
goes on and I love that we get to do
it for real. Yeah. Yeah, it's so exciting. He's literally

(04:25):
literally paid by by Bloomberg. Well, I think we should
get into it because I know, Robert, you've got seven pages,
are so prepared, and then we have so you wanna
tell us a bit about his early life. I don't
apologize for anything, yes, except for not being here with
us right now. Wait, what's the what's the snood? What

(04:45):
Mike Bloomberg or we're Doomberg? Okay? Uh, Michael Bestberg, the Bloomberg,
bloom Best best best, Mike bloom Best. This is all.
I don't have one. There's there's a bit of Roomberg
for Bloomberg. Oh that's it, Cody got it. That's pretty good. Um, alright,

(05:11):
there's a bit of Roomberg for Bloomberg. Robert, can you
take us away, far far away, make I can fly
far far from here on a journey back to a
better time, a more peaceful time, a time of enlightenment
and wonder and joy. I'm talking, of course, about nineteen

(05:35):
forty two, a year in which nothing bad happened, nothing,
nothing at all baden. I was like, which, which which
decade you talking about? Okay, so we're gonna start this
story going back on to February fourteen, Valentine's Day, nineteen
forty two, and Cody, would you help me set the mood?

(05:59):
The time machine noise? I have to take my headphones off.
Oh yeah, stop, Yeah, that's a Mike Bloomberg time machine noise.
This is abusive. We're six minutes in and we haven't
done anything we prepared. I feel like the sound you're making, Cody,
is the sound Mike makes when he tweaks his own

(06:20):
nipples at night before bed, and I want to leave
everyone with that image before we get into that's a
medical issue though for him. Okay, let's not. He paid
for me to say that. Katie Boys, I'm having a
lot of doubts about whether or not I will continue
to work with men in the future. Okay, should I

(06:41):
redo this? Sounds Born February four, nineteen forty two, um.
He came into this world via the ministrations of the
good people at St. Elizabeth's Hospital in Brighton, Massachusetts, near Boston.
His father was William Bloomberg, the son of Russian immigrants
who got out of the country just in time to
avoid the whole fall the Czar mess, which was unbalanced,

(07:02):
probably a good idea. William taught Hebrew and Chelsea, Massachusetts.
Michael's mother, Charlotte, came from a family of Belarusian immigrants
who had settled in New Jersey. She grew up in
Hoboken and Jersey City, where her parents ran a successful
wholesale grocery business. She earned a business degree in nineteen
twenty nine from New York University's Night School, which was
obviously very rare for women in that day, and she

(07:24):
got a job immediately, which was also quite rare. She
worked as an assistant auditor for National Dairy, where she
was introduced to her boss by her boss to William Bloomberg.
The two headed off, got married and moved to Boston,
where Mike was born, as we stayed in nineteen forty two,
when Michael was to the family moved out to Brookline,
where they lived in a rented home until their landlords

(07:45):
sold the house by surprise and kicked them out. Um it.
Mike had been a few years older and remembered this.
Perhaps some of the yeah might have changed the whole
trajectory of his yeah should have been in nine, But
it didn't, and he hasn't. So and he hasn't, and

(08:08):
so his parents. Because it was the forties and you
could just decide to buy a home of your own,
his parents decided to buy a home of their own
instead of renting again. Uh. They picked the town of
Medford for their new house because it was close to
where both William and Charlotte worked. This was Moving to
Medford was not a simple process because the Bloombergs were
Jewish and Medford was still very heavily segregated. Several neighborhoods

(08:29):
in the town where places where Jews unofficially were not
allowed to live, and this was not uncommon in the
United States at this period. Um huge amounts of anti
Jewish Jewish racist racism. Um. One of Mike's childhood friends,
Thomas Buckley, later told The New York Times, my uncle
wouldn't dare sell to a Jew, and his uncle was
a realtor in the neighborhood the Bloombergs moved into h quote,

(08:50):
if he did, he would have been out of business.
He knew they were buying it, he just didn't say anything.
And the way that the Bloomberg family accomplished this is
that they had their lawyer and irishman purchased the proper
from the realtor and then he sold it directly to
the Bloomberg family, So they were able to get the
house through subterfuge, which yeah, um. So, while obviously racism

(09:11):
was a factor in you know, Mike Bloomberg's family's experience,
it wasn't something he himself seemed to experience much. Michael
and his peers who grew up with him in Medford
suggests that like they really didn't encounter much anti Semitic
biggot bigotry. And this is probably due to the fact
that by the time Mike was really making memories of
World War Two had really come to a close. Um

(09:34):
and there was still obviously as there is now as
we've all gotten very well informed of a lot of
anti Semitism in the United States. But in the wake
of all the concentration camps being revealed, and all of
that happening. Um, a lot of Americans who were anti
Semitic stopped being so loud about it. And it kind
of seems like Mike grew up in a time where

(09:54):
he really, while it was still there, he didn't see
much of it. The quiet part loud, Era was shifting
a bit to keep it, keep it, keep a little quiet. Yeah.
And what the quiet part stopped being loud because of
the six million or so people who died when the
quiet part was allowed to bed. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah.

(10:16):
Maybe that says something about what we should do to
people who say the quiet part quiet. Um. So, Mike
was a unique lad from the start, a natural born
contrarian who preferred to play by his own rules. He
was a terrible athlete and a bad student, but he
excelled in the boy Scouts, where he was allowed to
go off and explore his own pace. He reached the

(10:36):
rank of Eagle Scout before he was technically eligible to
receive it. People who knew him then described a boy
who described a boy who was fed up with his
boring small town. From the very beginning. He wanted the world,
not a sleepy street in Massachusetts. Paul throw An author
who grew up in Bedford at the same time and
new Mike said this of their hometown, it was not
a bad place, but a place you want to leave,

(10:57):
to escape from. I thought it would be death to
day there, that I would just be swallowed up. It
was all right to grow up there, but to stay
there fatal, which I definitely agree with because I feel
kind of the same way about plain O, Texas. UM.
I feel like a lot of people probably have that
experience with their their their hometown. So that's Mike's uh

(11:19):
kind of. It's interesting. I make my living obviously telling
the stories of very famous, influential people, most of whom
are men, and bloomberg story follows a really familiar pattern
if you read articles about his life in The New
York Times or his unbelievably positive biography the many Lives
of Michael Bloomberg. Every what everyone emphasizes is that absolutely

(11:40):
everybody who knew this kid understood he was marked out
for greatness. UM. And obviously that is true in some cases,
Like I'm sure a lot of people listening this no
somebody who like from the beginning, we were like, oh,
this person is, like, you know, talented, and but my
friend's baby is constantly trying to play the guitar and
ban on the drums. He's gonna be a rob Yeah,

(12:02):
I get it. Yeah yeah. But at the same time,
whenever I see it written out, no, whenever I see
it written out like that, um, I just don't buy it.
In the case of this biography, maybe it's true. Um,
but they I will tell you that you can't read
about Mike Bloomberg's early life without a bunch of quotes

(12:23):
from people who knew him as a kid saying that
they were all sure he was going to be a
big deal, that he was a big deal. Yeah, that's
what you're saying. I'm not alleging that, because that actually
might be legally actionable. Um, but I am saying that
it is hard not to read those stories and suspect
something of that nature. Yea. Like As as as somebody

(12:45):
who officially has been paid by Bloomberg, I would say
that at a young age he was going places. I'm
sure that paid volunteer I talked to earlier would also
say that, don't anyway, go ahead, Robert, so uh yeah.
This segment from a New York Times article on Michael's
background is representative of the whole quote. He could do

(13:05):
everything from his point of view, you know. His mother
recalled smiling at the thought when she was ninety eight
years old, sharp of memory and gracious in manner, as
she sat in the living room of the modest New
England home where she and her husband had raised two children.
Charlotte Bloomberg evoked Mike's childhood is at once unremarkable and distinctive.
She described a rambunctious boy who trailed dirt into the
house despite her constant warnings, scared his sister with snakes,

(13:27):
and pressed friends with the ham radio set in his room,
and acted out at school, just a regular kid. If
there was one trait that stood out in Mike's childhood
for shadowing the Ajulty would become, it was his stubborn
insistence on taking charge anything that came along. He wanted
to do it. Miss Bloomberg said, he wanted to be
the boss of whatever we were working on. He wanted
to run everything. Sounds unbearable, sounds like, yeah, he really does.

(13:50):
Like that. That's the kid I don't want to sit
next to you at lunch. That's the kid you don't
want to be the president. One day. No, I want
to rule everybody. Now, it's a direct kid, you want
to be the president one day. I don't know, McCauley, Culkin,
I don't know. So in high school, Mike was not

(14:13):
a standout student either an academics or personality. He was
a C student for pretty much his whole academic career.
He was a member of the Debate club, but he
was the president of the Slide Rule Club, which might
be the only thing he ever winds up being president
of it. God god willing. So he's already had a
taste of that sweet, sweet presidential power. The Slide Rule Club.

(14:36):
The Slide Rule Club, Cody, I have questions that I
don't think you can answer, so I'm going to keep
him to myself. I mean, one thing we can assume
is that as president of the Slide Rule Club, he
was legally forbidden from getting laid. Sure, I mean, yeah,
it's in the by laws. So fans out there, m well,

(15:02):
we'll talk about that in a second, Katie. The Medford
High School yearbook had a section where they described each
kid's personality in a single word. Mike's was argumentative, which
he's carible at arguing on stages Now it's fascinating because
he has so many odious ideas and views, yet he's

(15:25):
also incapable of arguing for like, he's got both both
both are wrong. Yeah, it's like if someone filled Bin
Shapiro's mouth with toffee. Yeah, I just can't do it,
can't get it out. Actually, so now, Mike did not

(15:48):
have a particularly exciting love life in high school. See
the Slide Rule Club. One of his female class I'm sorry,
I normally don't. I was a big nerd. I played,
I had always, but like the Slide Rule Club President president,
that's high up in the Slide Rule Club. Um, I'm sy.

(16:08):
I I feel like I like, I'm like slowly morphing
into that guy from Revenge of the Nerds screams nerds
and rips his shirt off. Yeah now uh yeah ox
ox I think that that sounds right? Yeah, bone man. So.

(16:28):
One of Mike's female classmates later admitted to his biographer
that every girl in school considered him the biggest nerd.
She remembered that one girl, I mean a lot of
our listeners and ourselves, maybe we're the biggest nerds. So
wrong with it? Yeah again, I never didn't have a
d and d book with me. But also I look
at it and I believe it. Okay, I fully believe it. Yeah. Now,

(16:52):
she remembered that one girl kept getting asked out on
dates by Mike, and this girl first told him that
she couldn't go because your grandfather had died, And when
he asked again, she told him that he couldn't go
because her other grandfather had died. And after you're hearing this,
Mike just asked her, how many grandparents do you have left?
That cute sad? It's cute sad. Hey, we all we

(17:17):
all have that experience asking out someone who's like not
feeling it and like it sucks. It sucks no matter what.
It's never fun. But you got to get the hint.
At some point you just walk away a shame. You
don't have to. You could just run for president and
then they'll all have to say yes. To make a
long boring story short, Michael went to Johns Hopkins University

(17:37):
and got a degree in electrical engineering. Then he went
to Harvard and got an MBA. He was able to
avoid getting drafted to fight in Vietnam thanks to his
flat feet. He received a one y in medical deferment
in nineteen sixty six, the exact same sort of deferment
that President Donald Trump received the nineteen sixty eight for
his bone spurs. Yeah, that's where the similarities, right, the

(17:58):
only one? Yep? Good, all right, all right. President John F.
Kennedy was assassinated by Bernard Montgomery, Sanjors Sanders, and Mike's
senior year. This was devastating to most of his peers
and most people in America. Many of them took to
the streets, but Mike saw Kennedy's murder as a blip
in the real history of his time. Mike's own words,

(18:21):
a blip in the real history of his time? Is
that quote the assassinated? Yeah, that's Mike Bloomberg. JFK's assassination
was a blip. What does it even mean? Yeah, it's
like the defining moment of a generation. I mean, yeah,
you couldn't be more wrong, Like, you know, wh where

(18:43):
you were sitting when you found out? I don't know,
he's like nb D, guys, let's move on, feel like
I feel like nine eleven was kind of a blip
compared to the real defining moment of our generation, which
was the release of the Tim Allen movie Big Trouble. Yeah, yeah,
Mike added, quote it was like the death of Princess Diana,

(19:06):
and that everybody thought the world had changed, and the
papers were full of it. But a week later people
go back to their own work, there were their own lives,
and there was nothing changed. No matter what anybody says.
Really insist that that's the kind of big picture thinking
we need in the office. Yeah. I love that. He
added that at the end, like, no matter what anybody says,
because he knows he's wrong. So you have to slip

(19:28):
because literally everyone is going to disagree with me on this.
But yeah, we interviewed about this thirty years later. Mike's
primary regret about the assassination assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy
is that it led to the cancelation of a fraternity
dance party that he'd helped the plan. He expressed frustration
about this in an interview three decades after the fact.

(19:50):
They didn't get their deposit back. Okay, Jesus Christ, So
a guy who like holds really unimportant crudges is what
you're suggesting, really unimportant grudges against the murdered president. Okay,
Now that is where the similarity. That's where it ends.
That's the end of it, all right. I mean, I

(20:12):
gotta say this does make his anger at Bernard Sanders
make a little bit more sense, because Bernie Sanders is
why he didn't get to hold that party exactly. Yeah.
After college, Mike got himself a job at Salomon Brothers,
an investment banking firm in New York City. His job
starting out was to count and organize millions of stocks
and bonds, a task he did well enough that it

(20:32):
set him on the path to an early rise. He
became a partner at the age of thirty nine. Yeah.
Uh in nineteen that same year of something went wrong
inside the company. I think they were bought by Somebody's
kind of unclear exactly why. Um, but he was given
the job of running the firm's information technology division. And

(20:52):
he usually says that it was almost as a punishment.
So it seems like he kind of got shafted. Maybe
it's just that he was like the new partner, but
he got stuck with this was seen as kind of
a crap job. Um and Uh, computers kind of played
a minor role in trading at that point. The money
wasn't really in it. It was you know that that
that wasn't just how trading was done. Um. But Mike
got into computer trading very early, and his work with

(21:14):
computers gave him an idea, probably the only truly great
idea he's had in his entire life, the Bloomberg terminal.
Have you guys ever heard of the Bloomberg terminal. It's
the whole reason he's a billionaire. This is the thing
that made him rich. Um. And his idea was basically
to build a comprehensive computer system for stock trading and analysis,

(21:35):
sort of like a giant early smartphone, focused entirely on
helping traders do their job better. It was an ambitious idea,
and Mike had it before anyone else, or at least
anyone else with the funds to make it a reality. See,
Mike got really, really lucky and was fired at this
point and given a ten million dollars severance package. So
he had, Yeah, he had all his company got bought
and he got like fired in a bunch of money,

(21:56):
and he had enough money to to pay to make
this terminal idea of as a reality. And it's one
of those things, looking back, knowing what we know about technology,
everyone can see. Oh yeah, at some point stock trading
was going to get computerized, a product like the Bloomberg
terminal was going to get made. But he was the
first person to have the idea and he put his
money on the line and made it happen. That's interesting.

(22:16):
It's like the like whenever people talk about like the
brilliant Jeff Bezos, like in all of his deserving money
and stuff, where it's like, well, he had the idea
of a bookstore, but online. I do bet that that
building this computer system was excessively difficult because but I'm
not defending Bloomberg Facebook, like, okay, you had like a

(22:39):
phone book online basically, I mean what I what I
will say is that everyone who uses it up to
this day, they were like a bunch of reports kind
of like in the early aughts that like, oh, this
new app or this new thing is going to like
lead to the death of a Bloomberg terminal because everything
is computerized now and they're not going to need it.
It's still like the industry standard and incredibly common, and
pretty much everyone agrees it's a great product. So like,

(23:00):
I don't know stock trading and I hate it and
think it should be illegal, but it seems like it's
a great product for doing this thing that I hate
and think should be illegal. Speaking of products, we have
to take a really quick break. There is a quick one,
a really quick break for these ads by our good
friend Mike Bloomberg. Together everything. Wow, those were great, as

(23:29):
you know. What I liked most is I liked most
the fact that Mike Bloomberg promised that as president, no
girl would able to be able to say no when
he asked them out to the school dance. But that's
a really important platform. I like having the choice taken
away from me. You know, choices are hard. Exactly the
three is this three strike plan where like, okay, one
grandparent excuse, okay, to grandparent excuses, okay. The third one

(23:53):
you gotta say yes. That's how strikes. You gotta say
yes to Mike. I you know, and going into this election,
big thing was wanting my friends with diabetes not to
die from insulin shock. But now I'm on team let
make girls not say no to Michael Bloomberg three times. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
we're all agreed. Winning platform. So um, when Mike gets

(24:16):
forced out of his company given ten million dollars, he
puts it into starting a company called Innovative Market Solutions. Uh,
he has, he and you know the people he hires
build the Bloomberg terminal um and it's a huge success.
The Bloomberg's, as they came to be known on Wall Street,
were soon the hottest property in the industry. But the
midnineteen eighties, every self respecting trader wanted one. They were

(24:37):
incredibly expensive, tens of thousands of dollars a year, but
if you didn't have one, it meant your company really
didn't value you as a trader. And that's still kind
of the way things are. Um. Soon Bloomberg's was selling
like hotcakes, and Michael was a billionaire and the richest
man in New York City. He took his newfound fame
and used it to launch Bloomberg News and Bloomberg TV,
both of which were aimed at other rich people who

(24:59):
invest in the stock market rather than the actual workers
who create the value stock market people buy in trade.
I'm not a big fan of the stock market. Doesn't
sound like it. It doesn't sound too I know. I know,
if only I had invested, I would be making all
this sweet coronavirus money. Outside of work. Michael got up
to the standard rich guy hobbies. He got his pilot's
license and became a competent pilot with both the helicopter

(25:21):
and a jet plane. He regularly flies himself around to
this day. And I'm sure he's excited to be president
and get press shots, press shots of himself on the
pilot seat of Air Force one. That's a kind of
happen if he gets he's already planning it. He's already
planning it. Look at me, I'm flying. And he's probably
going to film like a YouTube video of himself flying
his campaign jet around and talking about how like Donald

(25:42):
Trump can't even flies on something like that, and it's
it's going to happen about the drops outside of flying, though,
Michael also got up to what is probably the most
traditional billionaire hobby of all, divorcing his first wife treasured

(26:05):
past the many lives of Michael Bloomberg. His biography says
this quote. His wife Susan, who left after she grew
tired of his high energy and increasingly public lifestyle, would
remain friendly and even work in his campaigns. Sure, that's
the end of the story. That's the end. They did it.

(26:26):
Now this biography is authored by New York Times reporter
Eleanor Randolph. And she's absolutely a real journalist, or at
least was. And this is supposed to be an independent biography,
not commissioned by Michael Bloomberg or written under his orders.
It was published in September of two thou nineteen, and
I don't believe for one second that there was There's

(26:46):
nothing something changed hands here. It's the most disgustingly positive
biography I think I've ever read in my entire life.
For example, when writing this, Leanor I think had a
very clear idea of what people would attack Mike for
when he ran for president. So, for example, the book
makes it. Yeah, yeah, there was an outline sent along.

(27:10):
The book makes a huge point of talking about how
many women Michael has hired for important positions, and how
strong willed and powerful his daughters are best friend because
they're all the same people. Here's a random paragraph from
this totally independent biography that absolutely was not written as
a blatant, shameless advertisement for Mike Bloomberg's presidential campaign. Are

(27:32):
you guys ready for this random paragraph picked at random?
I can't for the independent book. You had not planned
that you just you flipped to a page. With help
from friends, Bloomberg managed to hide any hurt about his
failed marriage, and soon he could be seen with some
of New York society's most glamorous women. He mostly liked
women his age, a bit unusual for the Wall Street crowd,
but that could still include Broadway or movie stars like

(27:54):
Annaree King or Marissa Berenson. He escorted friends like Barbara
Walters and a net dealer rented to this at these
most luxurious galas. He told The London Guardian in nine six,
I am a single, straight billionaire in Manhattan. What do
you think? It's like a wet dream. It kept going.
She's really she had to use the wet dream quote,

(28:17):
I think, um because it was like it was gonna
come up. Yeah, you gotta you gotta use a lot
of pipe to try to negate it. Yeah, yeah, great.
Totally a journalist and not a paid ghostwriter. Eleanor Randolph,
who absolutely is not a tired reporter cashing and on
the credibility of The New York Times. Make sure to
note that by the time Mike ran from Mayor of

(28:37):
New York City, the Post had labored labeled him as
the anti bimbo billionaire because he dated women who were
relatively close to his age rather than children, which hell, yeah,
that sounds like a man who respects women. I'm anti bimbo.
I love women, I respect them. I hate bimbos. Unbelievable,

(29:00):
so good. And I said that he was famous according
to his biographer, who he didn't pay for dating women
who were close to his own age and not children.
And we could say more about Mike's relationship with Jeffrey
Epstein here, but that would be mean. And it's not
a journalist job to be mean or talk about how
many different phone numbers you appear under in a famous
Pedophiles Fun notebook. And I feel like we've just mentioning

(29:22):
it once is all we need to do. Got a
few number times, I think, Yeah, multiple phone numbers half
a page. Really wanted to stay in touch with him.
Of the people in that book, uh Trumpscott like almost
a full page, I believe. And Mike's got like homes
like comparable. But he's anti bimbo, and that's what's important

(29:44):
for you all to remember. In this podcast paid for
by Michael Bloomberg, so Eleanor Randolph quotes her subject as
saying this, I find women my age more interesting. I
guess maybe it's just that I have less in common
with younger women. It's also safer, so how or another,
the wives of your friends find it much more reassuring.
So that's nice. You guys trusted Mike cat I've always

(30:07):
trusted mine. In the late do you like Mike? We
all like Mike. In the late nineteen nineties, Michael expressed
no interest in marrying again. He spent most of his
mayoral years with Diana Taylor, a financial executive who was
described by Totally a Real reporter Eleanor Randolph as straight
out of Anna Wintour's wardrobe room. At Vogue. It notes
that Taylor was basically the woman Michael trotted out when

(30:28):
he needed to be seen with a woman since he
was unmarried. Eleanor does state that he quote seemed to
treat her like a politically appropriate appendage, and one of
the few vaguely critical lines of the book, So that happened.
I guess, I guess you know that's fine. She's like
a mature adult woman. If you make the decision that
it's good for your career to be the hanging out
with the mayor. Like that's a fine thing, not like

(30:49):
being in Jeffrey Epskin's Black Book like that. No, I
really though, I can't over emphasize what a piece of
self aggrandizing shit the Mike Bloomberg biography is. At one point,
it notes that some people thought Mike Mike might be
gay because quote, even when he was nominally a Republican,
he supported gay marriage and civil rights. And then Eleanor

(31:11):
Randolph somehow swallowed herself hatred long enough to write this paragraph.
But simply watching him work a crowd might have helped
dispel such notions that he might have been gay. Once
accepting an awarded a gala for the Citizens Union public
interest group in two thirteen, Mike Bloomberg spotted a tall
blonde woman in a small huddle of people. The mayor
maneuvered himself so that as he passed by the makeshift

(31:32):
receiving line, he could give her a hug a kiss
on each cheek. Then he moved a little to shake
hands with a few admirers. Then he came back to
the blonde another hug, two more kisses. He even seemed
to be angling for a third round when the blonde
suddenly moved on out of reach. I mean, okay, pointing
to his womanizing as proof of him not being gay

(31:54):
doesn't really track for me, because that's also what people
do when they're trying really hard to not seem gay.
But I don't know. I'm not saying Michael Bloomberg's gay. Also,
who cares if he is? Yeah? I don't care if
he is. I I think it's it's more kind of
just gross to me. The way that's like spun as like,
what's that paragraph? A terrible piece of writing. It's a terrograph. Yeah.

(32:19):
It starts with like some people said he might have
been gay because he was nicer to gay people than
most Republicans, and then dispels that by spinning a story
of him clearly like not harassing might be a little strong,
but making a woman uncomfortable as like a positive stable
time back. Man, do you think that putting a woman
in an uncomfortable situation? Um? Do you think that the blonde? Uh?

(32:42):
Those first two instances said that her grandfather just died. Yeah,
I think the second time she's like, it is it's
another two, right, it's another since it's Mike, like fifty
years apart, getting is the same thing. It's amazing thing.
Never change. I a little bad that I'm like being
so critical about eleanor Randolph just because like I don't

(33:04):
want to just be like yelling at a lady journalist
in this Mike Bloomberg episode. But it's like, really, just
reading the book is really frustrating, Like the it's not
she's a journalist, she really is. She has a real
background as a journalist. I don't know how you write
this book. Um, I mean there's also Bloomberg campaign has
brought a lot of people out of the woodwork and

(33:24):
being like, oh, okay, you're a fraud. You know, sad
is like or maybe like she worked along hard career
as a journalist and now she needs enough money to
pay for medical care. Uh maybe maybe, And it's a
tough industry. I don't know. I can think of a
vote she could do. There's no way to vote for
health care now. This shameful, shameful book goes on to

(33:47):
note that, like many men of his generation, Bloomberg was
bewildered by the this is the Book's words so called
Me Too movement, the army of women who complained about
mistreatment and abuse in the earlier times. In the earlier times,
wait to get a really good tell whenever anyone says

(34:09):
the so called me to movement, Yes, they're showing their hands.
Eleanor notes that Mike immediately updated the company rules to
protect female employees quote and make sure they were given
premier benefits. Okay, oh good, finally here's here are some

(34:29):
other things Mike said in the earlier times, as is
well known thanks to the difference in the earlier time
in one of his employees told him she was pregnant,
and Michael Bloomberg said, kill it now. This came up
in the debate, and he it was basically, was it
Warren that brought this up? Um? Yeah, And I was

(34:52):
glad she brought it up. I do what The one
thing I wish you would have done is when she
was asked what this was based on, she said it
was based on this woman testifying, and it is and
that's that's accurate. But there was also another employee who
heard it and and like backs up that, like, this
is not just he said she said, these is other
people witnessed it and reported it. Um. And they are

(35:13):
not the only ones who reported Mike Bloomberg saying some
gross ship gross sh it like the Royal Family. What
a bunch of misfits, a gay, an architect, that horsey
faced lesbian, and a kid who gave up coup Stark
for some fat broad Mike Bloomberg. Everybody. Now, that last
quote comes from a book called The Portable Bloomberg. Have
you guys heard of this? Oh my god, I can't

(35:36):
believe this isn't bigger news. I can't believe it didn't
make it into a debate. The Portable Bloomberg is a
book made by employees to celebrate Michael Bloomberg's birthday in
n Elizabeth dems Yeah, it always a while Elizabeth DeMars,
Bloomberg's chief marketing officer, and the book's publisher, insists in
the book, yes, these are all actual quotes. Now, the

(36:01):
whole book is available online. Somebody gave it to I
forget which media organizing, but it's out there. You can
read the whole damn thing. Mike's campaign denies that he
said anything any of the things written in this gag gift,
which is how they described it. But that same spoke
spokesman for the Mike Bloomberg campaign immediately added this to
the Washington Post. Mike openly admits that his words have

(36:22):
not always aligned with his values and the way he
has led his life, and some of what he has
said is disrespectful and wrong. Yeah, I'm gonna read that
again and really take in this sentence, Mike openly admits
that his words have not always aligned with his values
and the way he has led his life, and some
of what he has said is disrespectful and wrong. That's

(36:42):
that's a doozy right there. I love his campaign is uh.
I wouldn't say good at it because it's so obvious,
but they love doing stuff like that, um sort of
talking around things and it's like saying like, yeah, I
didn't say them, but also they're all jokes. Well yeah,
when I didn't say them, but they're jokes. Yeah, it's

(37:03):
a yeah, yeah, it's it's great speaking of disrespectful and wrong.
Here's another line from the portable Bloomberg. I know that
for a fact, any self respecting woman who walks past
a construction site and doesn't get a whistle will turn
around and walk past again and again until she does
get one. Good stuff right, this is beautiful stuff. Here's

(37:25):
what if? Um, yeah, he went away, Um, I'm I'm
glad that he knows that for a fact any respect,
because he's right. I I will loop back and forth
until I get what I deserve, which is some kissing noises. Yeah,
when when you're famous, they let you do it. I've

(37:45):
heard now, Cody. That sounds like something a completely different
and bad person would say, very different from the things
that Mike Bloomberg said. You know what else Mike Bloomberg said, Cody.
Here's from the section of the Portable Bloomberg titled on
employee motivation? Mike, how do you motivate someone? Simple? Are
they addicted to three meals a day? The best mode

(38:08):
of fire? I his relationship with like like the boss
employee relationship he envisions for himself, and the way he've
used the world is so messed up and like what
he thinks like people deserve and like how you get
them to do stuff for you. It's just disgusting. Just

(38:29):
wait for the next quote. I don't want to a
customer think he's getting laid when he's getting fucked. Oh
my god. Yeah, there we go on negotiations. Oh boy, Cody,
you I'm so We're so have so many more of
these on negotiations. What do I want? I want an

(38:50):
exclusive ten year contract and automatic extension, and I want
you to pay me, and I want to blow job
from name blanked out? Have you seen name blanked out lately?
Not bad for fifty Oh my god. Because he's anti bimbo.
He likes older women, he hates he hates bimbo. Is
very good. Thank you Mike for your bravery. Other Mike
Bloomberg quotes on negotiations. Keep your legs closed. Always pick

(39:15):
a fight with someone smaller than you, as Chuck Colson
put it, if you have them by their balls, their
hearts and minds will follow. Don't get even get revenge.
Use the Nancy Reagan defense. Just say no and then.
Here's from a section on called on being told no.
Let me tell you something, buddy boy, I have pictures

(39:36):
of you and they're not with your wife. Boom you got,
boom blerg. Here's from a section called characterization of a
competitor cokehead, womanizing fag excellent man of the people on computers.

(39:56):
You know why computers will never take the place of people,
Because if computer would say that the sex of the
person giving you a blowjob doesn't matter. Joe. Yeah, you
like the comedies. These are the I've been wa you know,
Trump's a funny president, but we need a hilarious one.

(40:17):
And then here's from a section called on the Bloomberg,
which is remembered the terminal thing that he made his
fortune selling. It will do everything, including give you a blowjob.
I guess that puts a lot of you girls out
of business. I'm really upset. I mean, these are things
that Mike Bloomberg said to his employees often enough that
they wound up in a published book that this employees

(40:38):
circulated amongst themselves and gave him as a gift. And
here is my favorite last quote by Mike Bloomberg. If
Jesus was a Jew, why does he have a Puerto
Rican first name? Interesting question. He's posted another some more
playful ribbing from the best candidate we have to offer.

(41:00):
Of the jokes, I am not enjoying because they're just
especially especially since his excuse for everything was it was
it's really upsetting. So I'm going to stop playing along
that it's funny good. It's horrible. I think it's absolutely
like none of these are funny. Um yeah, I mean
like some of them are terms like there's no reason

(41:22):
to use that those certain words ever, No, like they
aren't all some of them are, I guess fine within
the context of a businessman, like the idea that like, yeah,
you gotta you gotta funk the customers, like they are
pretty common in that, but like a lot of this
is yeah, it points to the kind of man that
he is. That's how he did how I used people
who are him, how I used power and assist gross

(41:46):
m hmm. Now, I always want to be fair to people,
and it wouldn't be it would be unfair to not
make it very clear that Mike Bloomberg's employees, the ones
who wrote the portable Bloomberg at least, did so because
they really liked him. The author of this tone, a woman,
described the work king environment at Bloomberg's company as being
quote like a religious sect in terms of the devotion
of employees to their boss. So I do have to

(42:08):
note that like the folks that he said these things to,
a number of them, at least um considered these things
to be charming and witty. But not all of his employees.
And I can't say what percentage of them felt that way.
I can say that a significant number of other employees
were deeply unhappy with things that Mike said over the years.
We do not know entirely how many of those people

(42:30):
there were because of nondisclosure agreements. Um, but we know that.
For example, in former executive Sachiko Sakai Garrison sued the company,
claiming that, among other things, Mike had asked her if
she was still dating her boyfriend. When she said yes,
he asked you giving him good blow jobs? Yeah? No one,

(42:56):
no one at all. In n he was accused of
tell one male employee about his girlfriend, who was also
an employee, that is one great piece of ass. You
must be a great fuck. Oh it's coming to an
employee compliment. All the best bosses tell their employees they
must be great fox mm hmm. Yeah, I have nothing

(43:21):
to add. I'm angry right now. There's no joke. Yeah,
it's just is. He's just like he's just like a
gross rich guy who has power over all these people
and things. You can do what ever he wants and
never had to learn to like not be an asshole. Um.
At a sales conference in six Mike told all of
his sales people that he would quote like nothing more
in life. Than to have Sharon Stone sit on my
face again. This was at a work event. Yeah. Before

(43:44):
we conclude my section, I want to talk a little
bit more about the Bloomberg terminal. It is, by all accounts,
a great product, one that has survived the birth of
the smartphone era by being absolutely indispensable to the traders
who use it. These terminals have a lot of information
on their subscribers, and in two thousand and thirteen, Bloomberg
News report orders were caught using the terminal to steal
subscriber information and figure out what they were using it for. Effectively,

(44:06):
the journalism component of Mike Bloomberg's operation was using the
terminals that he sold to his traders to spy on
them in order to report on trading. Bloomberg admitted that
this practice was common and then regretfully changed the practice.
More recently, The Financial Times found that the Bloomberg terminals
were directing users to his campaign website when they typed

(44:26):
in the word Mike. This was claimed by a spokesman
to be an honest mistake. We accidentally coded this into
the terminal, so sorry. Maybe the guy with the history
of like spying on people and like people in the
City's mayor of h maybe it wasn't an accident. I
don't know. Maybe maybe I don't know. That's that's my

(44:47):
seven pages on Mike Bloomberg. A lot of a lot
of details packed in here. We got to take a
quick break and then we'll be back for more things. Hey, Mike,
tell us, tell us why we're you're great. Tell me
I'm a good funck Mike. I need to hear that
once a day from my boss. We can take care
about you together. Everything don't And we're back from those ads.

(45:21):
We're gonna talk about some other things Mayor Blurg boom related. Uh. Yeah,
there we talk about his time as mayor of New
York City. Uh, we don't have very much that it's unproblematic.
It did. We can't get into all the nitty gritty,
just kind of like the highlights. Uh. And perhaps the
most important thing he did while he was in office
was frequently participate in the annual Inner Circle charity review

(45:45):
show that brings Broadway stars and local politicians together on
stage to roast the city themselves. Proceeds get donated to charities.
I mean, I just I want to play a really
a quick clip because I think we can all agree
that the man is a star and he was born
for this stage. Don't really don't snapping up there? We
got don't hear the words American trouble or rocks taking

(46:11):
the bus, but the cops that we got here rows everywhere. Okay, okay,
you get the point, Like it's a natural star. I
liked it. It's like somebody took what's the most charismaticman.
I think it's like somebody took George Clooney and then

(46:35):
like like caused the human equivalent of whatever happens when
a star dies, so that he collapsed in on himself
and was replaced by a negative reality version of him.
It sucks of all of it's it's charisma, Like that's
Mike Bloomberg as a performer. But that's not all he
did as mayor. He also really stuck it to the

(46:56):
homeless people. Not only did the homeless population balloon to
the highest number since the Depression while he was mayor,
in two thousand nine, Bloomberg's administration started secretly charging rent
to homeless families that had some that had some income
coming in from jobs. And we're living in publicly run shelters.
Uh quote Vanessa da Costa, who earns eight dollars and

(47:16):
forty cents an hour as a cashier at Sparro, received
a notice under her door several weeks ago informing her
that she had to give three hundred thirty six dollars
of her approximately eight hundred dollars per month in wages
to the Clinton family in a shelter in Hell's Kitchen,
where she has lived since March um. And apparently this
had been a state law since nineteven that the city
could charge rent at homeless shelters, but it didn't get

(47:38):
inforced until the city got audited and had to pay
back state housing aid under Bloomberg Um And so they
started jumping through hoops justifying it. Uh you know. This
is a quote from Robert Hess, the city commissioner of
homeless services at the time. I think it's hard to
argue that families that can contribute to their shelter costs shouldn't.
I don't see this playing out in an advert sway.

(48:00):
Our objective is not for families to remain in shelter.
Are objective is to move families back into their own
homes and into the community. Right, So, paying a really
high percentage of your very low income. Is that going
to help them move out of a shelter? I don't.
That's how you save That's how you save money. Also, uh,

(48:21):
what about so they're charging rent? Are they protected by
renters laws? I don't think so. Okay, I want to
light something on fire, like and not in like the
whimsical way, but in like the I can't think of
anything more ghoulish than the billionaire mayor of a city
being like this law that nobody has, like like this

(48:44):
thing that's possible, but no one's done because it's so
ghoulishly vile. Let's do that because these shiftless homeless people
have it too easy. It's yeah, it's the it's the
how do you keep someone employed? Do they need three
meals a day? Or whatever that quote was. It's just
like and then, yeah, this is the policy pushed by
the same man who then spent enough money to home

(49:06):
every homeless person in New York City on his vanity election. Sorry,
we we know. Yeah, anyway, you think that's bad. Let's
talk about stopping FRISKA What is stopping frisk According to
the Cornell Law School, it refers to a brief nonintrusive
police stop of a suspect. The Fourth Amendment requires that
before stopping the suspect, the police must have a reasonable

(49:28):
suspicion that a crime has been, is being, or is
about to be committed by the suspect. If the police
reasonably suspect that the suspect is armed and dangerous, the
police may frisk the subject, meaning that the police will
give a quick pat down of the suspect's outer clothing.
And I'm sorry this definition leaves out a lot like
how easy it is for police officers to abuse and

(49:48):
how it unfairly targets people of color, exacerbating racism and
tensioned between minority communities and the police. Now, stopping frisk
had been a staple of policing in the US since
before Bloomberg took office. UH. The strategy spread with the
adoption of the data focused CompStat management system that was
started in the nineties. UH. This system allowed police to

(50:10):
track and respond to crime trends in real time. There's
actually a really good reply all. I think it's a
two parter, but anyway, they've got a really good reply
all on the CONSTAT system and I you know, I
recommend checking it out. But basically, UH it was a
system that evolved from efforts to stop subway crime. They
started using data to track where pickpockets and muggers were
committing their crimes and stay one step ahead of them.

(50:31):
And it worked. Crime rates started going down and received
a lot of positive feedback. Other states and cities began
adopting the same measures. But then the city got caught
in the cycle of needing to constantly improve crime stats,
and officers were pressured to up their arrests, etcetera. And
and police found themselves being punished if they didn't participate
in this kind of corrupt, racist system, you know, because

(50:54):
they have all this pressure to up there are arrests
and stop crime, and so they're targeting you know, um
Like there's stories about um rapists, people riping prostitutes and
prostitutes getting pulled in you know. Anyway, the whole thing,
it was bigger than just stopping frisk, but it really

(51:15):
that's part of the reason why stopping frisk exploded enduring
Bloomberg's tenure from two thousand to two thousand thirteen. Stopping
frisk bloomed officers stopped UH people they believed to be
engaged in criminal activity more than five million times. Officers
often searched the date detainees, the vast majority of whom
we're black and Latino men, UH, for weapons that rarely materialized. Technically,

(51:41):
officers are required to have reasonable belief that a person is,
has been, or is about to be, you know, involved
in a crime. But you know, many, many, many, many
police officers will take the color of someone skin as
a reasonable belief that a person may have been involved
in a crime, especially since they were under so much
pressure to keep stopping frisk numbers up. UH crime rates

(52:01):
did continue to go down during his time in office.
Bloomberg pointed to this as cause and effect that the
city was safer because they were taking guns off the street.
But in August, US District Judge Uh Sharra I can't
pronounce her last name, Schidelman, Shine Lynn. I'm sorry, Sara,

(52:21):
if you're listening, Uh ruled that stop and risk had
been used in an unconstitutional manner um and that the
police had to adopt a written policy to specify which
stops were authorized. And so it's you know changed, Uh
and Blueberg in his administration, will you know, talk about
how crime rates would go back up if they abandoned
stop and frisk, But that doesn't seem to be true.

(52:44):
For example, in five years after that ruling, the murder
rate was at the lowest it's been since the fifties, um,
for example. So okay, yeah, it's probably worth noting that
in the time period when New York had its incredibly
incredible drop in cry the rest of the United States
also had a massive drop in violence. Well yeah, yeah,

(53:05):
so okay, maybe that's an important thing to note. Maybe
he learned from the mistakes of his of his past.
You know, since entering the presidential race, he has apologized
for his past positions, but unfortunately as recently as he
has been on record defending Stop and frisk. In February,
and audio recording surface of Bloomberg defending the program at

(53:27):
a Aspen Institute event um. In the speech, he said,
of murders, murderers and murder victims fit one m O.
You can just take the description xerox it and pass
it out to all the cops. They are male minorities
sixteen to twenty five. That's true in New York, that's
true and virtually every city. And that's where the real
crime is you've got to get the guns out of

(53:48):
the hands of the people that are getting killed you,
So you want to spend the money on a lot
of cops on the street. Put those cops where the
crime is, which means in minority neighborhoods. So one of
the unattended consequences is people say, oh, my god, you
are resting kids from marijuana that are all minorities. Yeah,
that's true. Why because we put all the cops in
minority neighborhoods. Yes, that's true. Why do we do it?

(54:08):
Because that's where all the crime is. And the way
you get the guns out of the kid's hands is
to throw them up against the wall and frisk them,
and then they start, oh, I don't want to get hot,
so they don't bring the gun. They still have a gun,
but they leave it at home. Cool cool cool cool.
Um yea nauseating should not be allowed to run for president,
should never have been mayor continue, shouldn't um that's m

(54:33):
m H. Enrollment and attendance of schools in those neighborhoods
went down during stop and frisk because they were dead terrified,
uh to go to school anyway, all sorts of other
dumb shit happened while he was mayor. He cracked on
on civil liberties like protests under the guys of fighting terrorism.
He tried to stop regulations on toxic chemicals and paint dust.

(54:57):
I guess, oh yeah, And he got the New Yor
City Council to approve changes to term limits laws, which
allowed Bloomer to sink and win a third term. Um.
People were not happy about this, but it's hard to
say no to Bloomberg, especially at that time. You know,
his vast wealth gave him enormous power in the city.

(55:18):
He was a huge donor to charities and different organizations.
He basically bought their loyalty. Uh, and so it was
hard for people to speak out against him and to
gain traction and all that. So I guess maybe that's
that's where the similarities end. That's that's it. Anyway, That's
that's what I got. Five the mayor section. Yeah, I
mean even just the stop and frisk stuff should be disqualifying.

(55:42):
That that quote, the mindset behind it. They kind of
addressed this at the at the one of the debates,
but like he apologized ultimately for uh what the policy did,
not what it is. He has yet to acknowledge like,
oh yeah, maybe it was a bad idea. Maybe the
thinking behind it is actually very bad. And you know,

(56:03):
he claims that he didn't understand how bad it was
at the time, but that's not true. People were protesting.
He knew exactly what was happened. Well, he also says
that he, uh, you know, I rolled it back. I
ended up rolling it back. Well, they made you, yea,
they forced to roll it back after massive out. They
stopped to you and frissed you, and they found out.
Oh no, he's got a bad policy. I want to

(56:26):
roll some things by you. I do want to say
a little thing about guns, And because this is something
that particularly frustrates me with Bloomberg, I understand that I
am not on the same page as a lot of
Democrats when it comes to firearms, um, and I try
not to make that a huge portion of the show
or anything, because like people can want to even ban
assault weapons, which I don't personally agree with. And it's

(56:47):
not I don't think that they're they're bad people or
dumb for wanting that. I just happened to disagree, But
it pisses me off when a guy like Mike Bloomberg
says a lot of the things he says about guns.
For one thing, he has bragged a lot about the
fact that New York is much safer now on gun
control policies, and I have some serious doubts as to
how much of a factor they played, primarily due to
the fact that the kinds of firearms that are used

(57:08):
in crimes in New York are We're not the kind
of assault weapons that we're currently talking about. They're usually
like five and six shot revolvers. But outside of that,
what frustrates me about Michael Bloomberg talking about his desire
for more gun control is that Michael Bloomberg, for the
vast majority of his life, has hired a coterie of
bodyguards armed with the kind of weapons that he does

(57:29):
not believed should be legal for other people to possess.
And it is frustrating to me when a private billionaire
hires what amounts to a private military force with assault weapons,
with semi automatic handguns, with concealed handgun licenses that normal
New Yorkers cannot get, but his special bodyguards can because
he's the mayor and because he can, or because he

(57:51):
has the wealth and connections to make that happen. It's
normally impossible to a concealed handgun license in the city
of New York. Very rich people in their body guards
somehow wind up getting the few that are issued, and
that is I find I don't find it frustrating when
someone like Elizabeth Warren wants to uh institute into assault
weapons ban. It's something I might disagree with, but I
think it's genuinely held point. I think with a guy

(58:13):
like Mike Bloomberg, he doesn't want there to be less
guns because he's worried about gun crime. He wants to
have access to those weapons for the people that protect
him and his money, and he doesn't want anyone else
to have them, and that does frustrate me. Yeah, you
want to share a few things, just a few things. UM.
We we've gone through his life and times and career

(58:35):
and things, and we've gotten to the point where he
decided to run for president. So we will briefly talk
about this if we've talked about on the show before, UM,
and just how his campaign is operating. One interesting thing
is that he announced uh he wasn't going to run
for president, and then he did about a month after
Jeff Epstein died. Just throwing that up there. But um,

(58:59):
last year Bloomberg had him killed. I'm not saying anything
about my great friend Michael Bloomberg, who we support greatly. UM.
He has actually said that he wouldn't run for president
and that he didn't think he would win. I believe
his earliest last year he said that he would have
to change his views if he were to run. He

(59:20):
said he would have to change if he would run
as a Democrat, you have to change all of his
views and go on an apology tour, um, which we're
not really seeing. We're not really seeing that apology tour,
Mike actually defending everything you've said and just saying like
it was jokes. And I find that interesting. UM. I
find it interesting that a few years ago he said
on stage in front of cameras for people to hear,
that Bernie Sanders would have won during the election. And

(59:45):
this sort of brings me to the main point, which
is that he has actually not running to become the president. He's,
at this point, I think, spent more than half a
billion dollars of his own money on this UM. He
has pledged that he would give about a billion dollars
to whoever is the Democratic nominee. UM he has rescinded
that offer to Bernie Sanders for some reason. Interesting, It

(01:00:08):
is interesting, isn't it. Yeah, so that is what is
going on here, it seems because he doesn't really have
a path to the nomination. He's actually currently speaking with
super delegates and a lot of the d n C
to try to game a brokered convention that that is
his path to victory, it seems, and I think it's

(01:00:30):
telling what he's doing. When he jumped into the race,
nobody has voted for him yet, yet he still thinks
he is the one to do it. He has arrived
in the election claiming not only is he the only
person that can beat Donald Trump, but the race is
now between himself and Bernie Sanders, despite getting no votes,
no votes, Mike none. And also like, yeah, it's just

(01:00:54):
like let's let's pretend Joe Biden doesn't exist, like the
Warren doesn't exist. These who have delegates the audacity of
coming in and saying, I'm it's between me and Bernie,
I'm the only one. Um. And I find it interesting,
How dare you make me stand up for Joe bite unbelievable.

(01:01:14):
I refuse, but I will because Bloomberg is here now. Unbelievable. Yeah,
I think it's very telling all these things that have
happened that led him to running UM and how he's
definitely not going to get the nomination. He's just here
to mess things up because his his pitch is very empty.
His pitch is that he's independently wealthy, which I would

(01:01:37):
argue actually disenfranchises people. Donations like these donations to campaigns
is like one of the very few ways that people
can actually exercise their political power UM and show their
support for a candidate. And by removing that, he is
removing UM democracy a bit by saying, I'll just fund
the whole thing. And he's also saying that the only

(01:01:59):
thing that is defeating Donald Trump. That's the thing. And
I'm not saying that that's not important, but by saying that,
he is excusing himself from actually having a platform. If
you say, the debate stage, the only thing he's talking
about is Trump. It's the only thing. And it makes
him just draws the parallel that he's so much like Trump.

(01:02:21):
It's so obvious. UM and never Trump has really drew
over this sort of approach because they think that like, well,
why aren't they going after Trump? Well, it's easy to
go after Trump and it's the primary, come on, So
he's offering nothing. And also he's framing this as though
Trump is actually terrified of going up against me, citing no,
there's no evidence for this. It's there's actually much more

(01:02:43):
evidence that Trump is actually scared of going up against
Bernie Sanders. But it's just it's sort of like this
weird lie after lie after lie saying like, I'm running
for this and this and this, and here's what, here's
the situation. It's me or Bernie, folks, And it's so
transparent what he is actually doing and what his goal
is um and it's actually discussing how much money he's

(01:03:05):
of his his own, that he's pouring into this in
order to steal an election from people. Cody think about
it this way. I think you're over emphasizing how much
he spent he could With the money he spent running
for president, he could barely have fixed Flint, Michigan's water
problems nine or ten times barely, so probably could have
covered those homeless people's rent at the homeless shelter. Just

(01:03:28):
throwing that out there, Yeah, to this sort of point
of why he's actually running, um, not to be president,
which if you want he would be a bad president,
you can all agree. But he's not running to be president.
He's doing it to stop people. In a closed door
event in June, Mike Bloomberg said that his presidential campaign

(01:03:52):
platform would be to defend the banks. Uh. He joked
about drowning his personal enemies something that. But that's the last,
the last similarity between him and Trump. That's the last one. Um.
He also called the progressive movement, and this is the
more specifically scary. Jesus, the writing is on the wall
for what he's doing. It was very obvious without this audio,

(01:04:12):
but I think that speaks exactly to what's going on.
I know I'm coming across probably as the heavily armed
lunatic of the podcast, which I am, um, But when
you've got a billionaire talking about the progressive movement to
fix horrific wealth inequality and provide healthcare to people as scary,
and also trying to take away those people's guns while

(01:04:34):
arming a private militia essentially of his own to protect
his own body and property, I don't I don't like that, Cody.
I don't like that. I don't see the problem. Um.
But then again, I wasn't listening to anything you said,
so I probably agree with what you said. I'm just
gonna cash my Mike Bloomberg check to buy something he
doesn't think I should. Yes, absolutely no. Yeah, it's uh,

(01:04:56):
it's gross that he's able to do this, and more
people aren't disgusted openly disgusted about it. Um. I alluded
to it earlier, but it's very interesting watching who gets
on the Bloomberg train. Um, and it's like, um, it's
like them train. Yeah, it's like that that chemical you
put in pools to see uh there if there's urine

(01:05:20):
in the pool, Like, uh no, there's like a chemical
you can put in pools to to see P. I
think that. I think I named it right. Did you
say gonaihea? Yeah, that's what you put in swimming pools
so that it cleans him makes the P. I think.
You know, you gotta get a new pool guy. Man,
I'm sorry. I mean a lot of people have been

(01:05:42):
saying that, screaming that. Really a lot of people are
screaming that at you, shouting that angrily. Yeah, get a
new pool guy. Yeah, but yeah, the bloom Bloomberg is
the p chemical for pools. I think in terms of
like pundit pools, that's exactly Bloomberg is gonorrhea for pools,
a statement endorsed financially by Mike Bloomberg. Sophie's Sophie's rolling

(01:06:04):
in here with some motherfucking research like a goddamn champion
Anaconda cobra tossing it to Sophie. That was unnecessary, I think,
as people will probably know about this already, but because
it was hinted at during one of the debates, but
Bloomberg's campaign actually sent an internal memo to all the
other candidates running for president telling them to stop running

(01:06:27):
for president so that he could win, because there was
no way Sanders could beat Donald Trump. And then the
document goes on to point out the alleged weakness in
each of Bloomberg's moderate competitors, before concluding if Biden, Buddha Judge,
and Cloba Jar remain in the race, despite having no
path to actually get the delegates on Super Tuesday and beyond,
they propelled Sanders to a seemingly just it's literally just

(01:06:51):
like saying that he's there's no way that Sanders is
heally so yeahs to stop Standers campaign, to stop Sanders campaign.
But also it's like, hey, I'm going to insult all
of you, yeah, unders say that I'm the front runner
actually and then insult everybody and mind you this yeah,
mind this is before this is on February. So yeah,

(01:07:14):
it's it's embarrassing and disgusting, um and very trumping weird. Um.
It's the contrast between because we've also seen so much, um,
Bernie's so such a Trump guy, it's very trump like
Trump like behavior when bloom behavior like wanting to give
everyone healthcare, ye, disgusting Trump and stuff, and Bloomberg is

(01:07:34):
to a t what they're saying that Sanders is that
is such a Trumpian thing to do, just like jump
in like all that kind of stuff. The big difference
between them is that Donald Trump is very comfortable um
slightly messaging to a growing network of heavily armed militias
around the country um to protect himself um, whereas Michael

(01:07:55):
Bloomberg prefers to heavily armed police and private security companies
in order to protect himself in his assets. And huge
differences between those two things and their impact on regular people,
massive differences. You very clearly laid out the differences. Um
that I now see. Um, it's uh, it's really something. Um.

(01:08:17):
He is also just this is very uh, this is
very silly criticism. But he's come in to this race
um to basically say, like Bernie's dangerous. Uh, he can't
win against Trump despite evidence that he can. Um, it's
my it's my campaign to win now. And also the
Bernie bros Are just like the Maga folks. Um, he's

(01:08:39):
really really leaned hard on every single talking point that
never Trump Republicans have been planting the seeds for for years.
It's very telling, I think, and that he has showed
up and it's like that thing, that thing all that
never Trumper said, it's that is my campaign. Um. His
billboards saying that Trump eats bad steak, I eat steak cooked. Well,

(01:09:00):
I'm a good billionaire. It's very disgusting. But who's better?
I mean, Cody, Come on, Yeah, who can we trust
more for advice on democratic politics than a bunch of
guys who never voted for a Democrat until the choice
was between a Democrat and a literal fascist. Mm hmm.
Those seem like trustworthy people. Also, his ads are fucking horrible. Yes,

(01:09:25):
we haven't said that yet, And I just think it's
really necessary to point out there's one where there's like
a boxing ring horrible. Yeah, it's embarrassing. Um, half a
billion dollars on this stuff. Um. And then you see
a lot of people like, oh, wow, Bloomberg going after Trump,
this is what we need. We will go after Trump
when there's a nominee on like this is a waste
of time. Yeah, it's not. You know what, And you

(01:09:46):
know what, We've all been going after Trump for almost
four years now and it didn't stop him from doing anything.
He's gotten to do the things, and people making fun
of him and yelling at him didn't do anything. Maybe
we should offer people something that will mobilize them and
energize them as an alternative to Trump, as opposed to

(01:10:09):
saying vote for me. I'm like Trump, but I'm less rude.
That's what he is. He's slightly less rude publicly, and
he's a little more and he's a little more competent.
That's another thing about Bloomberg that is like, oh, you're
a little more competent and you're a little more civil
on the surface, so people will accept you more. Um,
you're more esthetically acceptable. But they're the same kind of person. Um,

(01:10:33):
there's a reason there's so many of them playing golf together.
Don't forget about that beautiful song he sang at that
charity event. Oh yeah. Also, I love that he came
out with a big look at all the vandalism that
the Bernie bros. Are doing to our offices. First of all,
uh I questioned whether or not it's accurate at all,
but so many of those pictures were of posters left

(01:10:54):
outside and it's being presented as this vandalism, and it's again,
it's just all these sort of right wing talking points
that have bubbled to the surface that people like Buddha
Jedge have latched onto. Now that Bloomberg came even though
I'm good to Jedd dropped out today, So good for him. Yep,
it's a good time to be an American. It's a

(01:11:16):
conclusion we've made, and it's good to be an American
because of Michael Fitzgerald, Scott Thomas, Elizabeth Bloomberg. I want
to note that our sponsor today, Michael Bloomberg's official stance
on the jfk assassination is that whether or not Bernie

(01:11:38):
did it. It's not a big deal. Oh yeah, no, forgiven, Yeah, accepted, forgiven,
water under the bridge, Bernie, wa, don't of the thank
you for taking the most progressive stance on Bernard Sanders
assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Michael Bloomberg, unbelievable things. And
then we probably put in the end there, wait more,

(01:12:00):
I will say right before Super Tuesday, so we'll see. Um.
I think it's interesting that Bloomberg thinks he's stopping Bernie
when actually he's siphening off a lot of support for
Joe Biden and the only person that is the real
alternative to Burn literally running the same exact adds as
Biden with like oh look, Obama's my friend. Yeah, it's interesting.
It'll be interesting to see how that plays out when

(01:12:22):
people are finally able to vote for Bloomberg. Yeah, hasn't
got a single vote yet. Well well, okay, that about
does it for us today. Thank you so much for listening.
You can check us out online at worst your pot
on the Twitter and the Instagram's merchant stuff um, and
you can you can also find us on your phone

(01:12:42):
by just texting Mike Bloomberg to any number, any number
at all. You just start, just start texting it, and
don't say anything else, don't type anything else. Just repeatedly
type the words Mike Bloomberg and randomly text them to
everybody in your phone for hours. Everyone. Just do at
It's a great idea. Spend your time downsides and spend

(01:13:03):
your time doing that, and we'll have a special superducer
episode this week. We will have We will be back
the next day. After year. We will be back thanks
to the support of Mike Bloomberg, who funded this episode
and endorses everything we've said in it. He made it.
He made this appen as well everything everything get Worst

(01:13:33):
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