Mike Bloomberg had a comprehensively awful night onstage in Las Vegas on Wednesday night. Attacked by Elizabeth Warren and almost everyone else from the outset, he was on the defensive over his history of sexist comments, nondisclosure agreements, and, perhaps most acutely, the stop and frisk policy he instituted while he was mayor of New York.
Bloomberg defended stop and frisk by claiming that the policy “got out of control” while he was mayor, that he was “embarrassed about” the way it turned out, and that he drastically cut down on the number of stops of his own volition. He said that he lowered the number of stops by 95 percent when he realized there was a problem.
The reality is very different. Bloomberg was forced to change his policy via a court order, and he defended the policy all the way up until last year; he only apologized several months ago, just before he geared up for his presidential run.
But Bloomberg’s unconvincing and un-energetic defense was one of only a number of lowlights. Minutes later, Warren eviscerated him over his past usage of nondisclosure agreements to silence women who have leveled allegations against him and his company.
Warren helped inspire a response unusual in a primary debate:
