Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) came out hot for the latest Democratic debate, held on February 19 in Las Vegas, Nevada. Her first target? Billionaire and former New York mayor Mike Bloomberg, who took the debate stage for the first time since entering the 2020 presidential race.
Warren set the tone within the debate's first minutes, comparing Bloomberg to Donald Trump. "I'd like to talk about who we're running against a billionaire who calls women 'fat broads' and 'horse-faced lesbians.' And, no, I'm not talking about Donald Trump. I'm talking about Mayor Bloomberg," Warren said. "Democrats are not going to win if we have a nominee who has a history of hiding his tax returns, of harassing women, and of supporting racist policies like redlining and 'stop and frisk.'"
Bloomberg's controversial "stop and frisk" policy, which disproportionately targeted black and Latino New Yorkers and was ruled unconstitutional, was a major subject of conversation last night, with Warren adding, "When the mayor says that he apologized, listen very closely to the apology. The language he used is about 'stop and frisk.' It's about how it turned out. No, this isn't about how it turned out. This is about what it was designed to do to begin with."
Warren also took Bloomberg to task over allegations within his company of sexual misconduct and gender discrimination against women. Bloomberg tried to highlight women he's promoted and supported over the years, but Warren wasn't having it. "I hope you heard what his defense was—'I've been nice to some women. That just doesn't cut it," she said. She further called on Bloomberg to release women from the the NDAs they'd signed at his company so that the country could hear their stories. "We are not going to beat Donald Trump with a man who has who knows how many nondisclosure agreements and the drip, drip, drip of stories of women saying they have been harassed and discriminated against," Warren continued.
Twitter was buzzing over Warren's fiery performance. "I don’t know why you guys are surprised. Elizabeth Warren has been taking down rich guys trying to run a grift on you her whole career," Ashley Nicole Black tweeted. "This is what she was made for. This is just a taste of how she’s going to handle Trump."
And it would appear that it wasn't just lip service on social media—the Warren campaign announced they raised $2.8 million last night, the best 24-hour period of fundraising ever.
The next Democratic debate will take place on February 25 in Charleston, South Carolina.
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