The liberal media seem to only care about propping up billionaires when the views of the rich align with their own. The New York Times did an entire puff piece elevating the candidacy of liberal billionaire 2020 candidate Michael Bloomberg, with little criticism.
The Times published what could be read as a teaser for an unofficial political biography for the billionaire owner of controversy-laced liberal outlet Bloomberg News, Dec. 22. In the article, liberal authors Matt Flegenheimer and Maggie Habermann gave a roughly 2,785-word historical spin on how Bloomberg’s electoral success for mayor in New York City could translate to a 2020 victory. The authors wrote: “[A]s Mr. Bloomberg plots an unconventional path to the Democratic presidential nomination, allies see his first mayoral run as proof of concept.”
They continued: “It was the race that demonstrated, both to Mr. Bloomberg and to those who might doubt him, that an inelegant campaigner with bottomless resources, party agnosticism and a heap of political baggage could prevail” [emphasis added].
Fellow billionaire and President Donald Trump would never have gotten such softball profiling from the Times. Its Editorial Board decried him as a “singular celebrity narcissist who has somehow, all alone, brought his party and its politics to the brink of fascism” around the same period before the 2016 election in December 2015.
But then Trump also hasn’t given millions furthering radical gun control or spending $500 million on an environmentalist crusade to completely shut down the coal industry in the U.S. by 2030.
Flegenheimer and Haberman took readers down memory lane of Bloomberg’s 2001 “Republican” mayoral campaign in New York City. They wrote that “a review of the 2001 race, drawn from dozens of interviews with aides, advisers and adversaries, makes plain that Mr. Bloomberg’s political origin story owes to almost supernaturally improbable conditions,” which included the 9/11 terror attacks, “canny check-writing and a string of flukes” [emphasis added].
Criticism of Bloomberg was buried deep in the piece. Paragraph 31 noted Bloomberg wondering “aloud whether Fernando Ferrer, a Hispanic Democratic mayoral contender, was a baseball player” and his chafing at questions about his finances as examples of what the Times merely chalked up to Bloomberg’s “indiscipline as a first-time candidate” [emphasis added].
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The more glaring critiques of Bloomberg the Times was willing to note were buried in paragraphs 26 and 32. Paragraph 26 briefly noted his donations to NYC’s Independence Party, whose leaders included an activist who “once called Jews ‘mass murderers of people of color’ and a psychotherapist who had promoted sex between therapists and patients.” But this didn’t stop the Times from noting later on that Bloomberg’s investment in the Independence Party would pay off with minority voters.
Paragraph 32 downplayed Bloomberg’s company’s sexual harassment lawsuits. Its only reference to the lawsuits were “Several news stories detailed sexual harassment lawsuits at Mr. Bloomberg’s company and a booklet of off-color sayings given to him once as a birthday present, copies of which were distributed gleefully around City Hall by a young Democratic Congressman and future mayoral candidate hopeful, Anthony Weiner.”
Nowhere did the Times outline Bloomberg’s personal derogatory comments about women, ignoring their own paper’s Nov. 14 expose which exposed the billionaire’s sordid history with women.
No specifics in the multi-page piece were given about the sexual harassment claims. One 1997 lawsuit alleged that “Sexual harassment and sexual degr[a]dation of women at Bloomberg [company] was pervasive,” The National Review reported Nov. 14. “The suit accused Bloomberg of making racist remarks as well, including calling Mexican clients ‘jumping beans’ and telling a female employee who needed a nanny, ‘all you need is some black who doesn’t even have to speak English to rescue it from a burning building.’” The lawsuit even claimed that Bloomberg had told a pregnant female employee to “kill it,” after she had informed him of her pregnancy, National Review added.
The Times’ Editorial Board did a similar analysis of the 2016 Trump campaign Dec. 10, 2015, albeit with a much more visceral take. Instead of offering an equally fair analysis, the Times settled for liberal propaganda: “[S]erious damage is already being done to the country, to its reputation overseas, by a man [Trump] who is seen as speaking for America and twisting its message of tolerance and welcome, and by the candidates who trail him and are competing for his voters.”
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