Bloomberg Says "Defend the Banks" Would Be in His Presidential Platform

By Luke Darby, GQ

26 February 20

In yet another leaked speech, Bloomberg told Goldman Sachs executives about how he would keep their interests at heart.

ne of the biggest threats to billionaire Michael Bloomberg's presidential aspirations may be his own long history of damning comments. In leaked recordings, the former New York City mayor adamantly defended racial profiling ("You can just take a description, Xerox it, and pass it out to all the cops. They are male, minorities, 16 to 25."), and he has also said many offensive and misogynistic things to women who work for him (like yelling "KILL IT" when an employee told him she was pregnant).

This week, news outlets obtained audio of a speech Bloomberg made at a closed Goldman Sachs event at Yankee Stadium in June of 2016. With the election to replace Barack Obama in full swing, Bloomberg gave a hint about what his presidency would look like if, some day, he did decide to run. "Well, to start, my first campaign platform would be to defend the banks, and you know how well that's gonna sell in this country," he said. Bloomberg continued:

But seriously. somebody’s gotta stand up and do what we need. A healthy banking system that’s going to take risks because that’s what creates the jobs for everybody. And nobody’s willing to say that. The trouble is, these campaigns in this day and age, really are about slogans and not about issues anymore. And in this election you’re going to see people are voting and they either love or hate, mostly hate both, but who you hate the least. That’s what they’re going to vote for. And they’re not going to vote on issues.

The comments came eight years after the banking industry ignited the 2008 financial crisis, and then received a $700 billion federal bailout. In the first year after the crisis, banks used the bailout money to give their top executives $1.6 billion in bonuses. Goldman Sachs practically became shorthand for the financial industry's lawless, profit-driven misconduct—while no executives went to prison, the company was later forced to pay $5 billion for its role in the financial crisis. In his seminal Rolling Stone investigative piece, Matt Taibbi famously described the investment bank as "a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money." Bloomberg called the Goldman Sachs guests in attendance "my peeps."

In the same recording, Bloomberg—then a Republican who had endorsed George W. Bush for reelection in 2004—gave some insight as to why he endorsed Barack Obama for reelection in 2012, saying, "The second Obama election I wrote a very backhanded endorsement of Obama." He explained that while he didn't like Obama, he was more disappointed in his Republican opponent Mitt Romney: "I thought he...hadn’t been good at things that I think are important and Romney would be a better person at doing that. But Romney did not stick with the values that he had when he was governor of Massachusetts." He added, "I thought Democrats would throw it back in my face, but they loved the endorsement." In 2020, Bloomberg's campaign has tried to give the impression that he has close ties to former president Barack Obama, with at least one ad carefully edited to give the impression that the popular former president has endorsed him.

Bloomberg also criticized what he saw as growing interest in progressive politics, describing it as "scary" at the same that Donald Trump was poised to secure the Republican nomination for president. "The left is arising," Bloomberg said. "The progressive movement is just as scary. Elizabeth Warren on one side. And whoever you want to pick on the Republicans on the right side?" Warren, who by then had helped create the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, had developed a reputation for being a relentless critic of the banking industry.

Bloomberg has sunk more than $460 million now into the remaining primary races, and his campaign has reportedly pivoted to targeting frontrunner and Vermont senator Bernie Sanders specifically. On Monday, his campaign put out a series of tweets with made-up quotes of Sanders defending despots and autocrats around the world, including one claiming Sanders was attracted to shirtless Vladimir Putin. The tweets drew so much criticism that the campaign deleted them the same day.

In the end, Bloomberg perhaps had reason to be afraid of Warren, considering how badly she flayed him in his first ever appearance at a Democratic presidential debate in Nevada last week. And Warren, for her part, seems to be welcoming another round of press from Bloomberg. Her campaign has acquired the URL ScareMikeBloomberg.com and linked it to a donation page for her campaign.