WATCH: Elizabeth Warren Drops the Mic When Asked If She Deserves Credit for Taking Out Bloomberg
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), who dropped out of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary on Thursday, offered a deadpan response when asked if she deserved credit for self-funding billionaire candidate Mike Bloomberg’s departure from the race the day before.
Speaking with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow from her home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Warren discussed the lessons she took away from her ultimately unsuccessful campaign. Teeing up her question about Bloomberg, Maddow replayed a clip of the Massachusetts senator’s devastating takedown at the Nevada debate of the former New York City mayor, who experienced a steep drop in his net favorability among Democrats in the days following.
“Senator, you outlasted Mike Bloomberg in this campaign,” Maddow noted.
“Oh, yeah, was he still in that race?” Warren asked, tongue firmly planted in cheek.
“He was still in that race, but nobody could tell after you destroyed him on the debate stage that way,” Maddow added. “A lot of postmortems on his campaign credit you basically with single handedly tanking his candidacy with the way you took him apart in that debate. Is that what you were trying to do?”
“Yes,” Warren said.
“Do you take credit?”
“Sure.”
“But the point is he’s not going to be the Democratic nominee and he shouldn’t be the Democratic nominee,” she added after a pause. “In my view he was absolutely the riskiest candidate for Democrats on that stage. And let me tell you part of the reason why. All of those things in his history mean that he could never launch any of those attacks against Donald Trump. Think about the things we are going to need to talk about: hiding your taxes, history with women, embracing racist policies. When you’re in charge, helping bazillionaires and leaving everybody else behind. Shoot, he wouldn’t even be able to launch the autocrat argument against him because Michael Bloomberg’s the guy who when he was mayor literally got a change in the laws so he could hang on to power longer. So, from my perspective, the idea that a billionaire would just spend enough money to buy his way onto the stage and then not be able to be an effective candidate against Donald Trump, that was not — not good for democracy, the billionaire buying his way on, and not good for Democrats, a guy who I think would have had the worst chance against Donald Trump.”
Watch the video above, via MSNBC.
