Sparks flew during the ninth Democratic presidential debate, with five veteran debaters and one newcomer facing off on stage on Wednesday.
Wednesday's debate was the first for billionaire former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, who took considerable heat from the other candidates on stage over his treatment of women and defense of stop and frisk.
The debate, hosted by NBC News, MSNBC and The Nevada Independent, put pressure on Bernie Sanders to defend his position as a leading candidate in the run-up to Nevada's caucuses on Saturday, while moderates Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar — and now Bloomberg — looked to widen their bases, and Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren sought a boost after failing to meet early expectations.
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Highlights from the Las Vegas Democratic debate:
- Who won the Democratic debate in Las Vegas?
- ANALYSIS: Finally, the fight Democrats have been waiting for.
- Debate rivals hammer Bloomberg over 'stop and frisk' policing in NYC.
- Warren comes out swinging and lands several punches.
Fact check: Biden is right, Bloomberg opposed Obamacare in 2010
"The mayor said, when we passed it, the signature piece of this administration, 'It's a disgrace.' They're the exact words. 'It was a disgrace.' Look it up, check it out. 'It was a disgrace,'" Biden said.
Bloomberg did in fact call the Affordable Care Act a "disgrace" in 2010, and there's video — Biden just put it in an online ad. The former New York City mayor's health care plan includes a proposal to "build on the ACA to achieve universal health coverage."
Warren's redlining attack reflects long history of defending consumers
Warren described herself as a champion of lending equity and the opposite of Bloomberg during Wednesday night’s debate.
"When Mayor Bloomberg was busy blaming African Americans and Latinos for the housing crash of 2008, I was right here in Las Vegas, just a few blocks down the street holding hearings… Banks…were taking away homes from millions of families," she said, referencing Bloomberg's past comments on redlining.
Warren first came to national prominence while a law professor at Harvard University whose research indicated before the Great Recession that American households were drowning in unsustainable levels of debt thanks to reckless lending practices. Lending to low-income borrowers and Americans of color at the highest interest rates, regardless of credit scores or incomes, had become a go-to way for major banks and Wall Street institutions to boost profits, Warren has said. These lending practices also pushed disproportionate shares of black and Latino homeowners into foreclosure, according to the Center for Responsible Lending.
Warren’s financial research later prompted her to advocate for, and later help lead, a new federal agency, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The agency was created by the Obama administration in 2010. It’s oversight and regulatory powers have since been curbed by the Trump administration.
Klobuchar on how she handled police-involved shootings as prosecutor
Fact check: Why did Bloomberg's administration cut back on stop-and-frisk?
Stop-and-frisk “got out of control. And when we discovered, I discovered, that we were doing many, many, too many stop-and-frisks, we cut 95 percent of it out,” Bloomberg claimed Wednesday night.
This is false and misleading. Bloomberg championed the expansion of the policing strategy stop-and-frisk during his administration, it didn't happen without his awareness. The practice was scaled back significantly thanks to a 2013 court order declaring the policy unconstitutional, not Bloomberg’s change of heart.
Bloomberg, in his three terms as New York City mayor, expanded and championed stop-and-frisk — the strategy that gave police the authority to detain people suspected of committing a crime and lead to a practice of stopping mostly black and Hispanic men — right up until days before announcing he was running for president, according to a comprehensive timeline reported by The New York Times.
It's still anybody's debate
When it comes to talking time, it's still anybody's debate.
Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren kicked off the debate with the most time spent speaking, with a solid margin over the other candidates on stage. Deeper into the night, the hierarchy turned fuzzy as Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Mike Bloomberg took more microphone time.
Follow along with our debate-night candidate talking time tracker here.
Fact check: Is Bloomberg against raising the minimum wage?
Sanders, in a veiled shot at Bloomberg, suggested: "Maybe we can talk about a billionaire saying that we should not raise the minimum wage. Or that we should cut Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid. If that's a way to beat Donald Trump, wow! I would be very surprised."
Bloomberg said in a 2015 interview with his own Bloomberg channel that he had “never” been in favor of raising the minimum wage. But now, as a presidential candidate, he backs raising the minimum wage to $15, according to his campaign website.
Buttigieg and Sanders spar over their personal health and health care
Buttigieg hit Sanders after the senator was asked about his health and recent heart attack. Buttigieg said he was "less concerned about the lack of transparency on Senator Sanders' health than I am about the lack of transparency on how he plans to pay for his healthcare plan."
Sanders quickly hit back, calling Buttigieg’s plan "a maintenance continuation of the status quo." Insisting that Democrats needed to be more ambitious and citing a Yale study, Sanders claimed that Medicare for All would save $450 billion a year “because we are eliminating the absurdity of thousands of separate plans” and save tens of thousands of lives.
The Yale study Sanders cited, published by noted medical journal the Lancet, was published on Saturday and concluded the Medicare for All Act would lead to 13 percent in savings in national health-care expenditures and potentially save more than 68,000 lives.
Warren assails Bloomberg over his treatment of women
Bloomberg was asked about criticism of his past comments about women he worked with. He sought to downplay the concerns, saying that women were offended by "maybe" a "joke I told."
"We have very few nondisclosure agreements. None of them accuse me of doing anything other than maybe they didn't like a joke I told."
This answer promoted Warren to immediately go on the attack.
"I heard what his defense was: 'I've been nice to some women,'" she said, pressing him to release the women from their NDAs.
Both Warren and Biden pressed Bloomberg to commit on the debate stage to releasing the women from their nondisclosure agreements.
“All the mayor has to do is say ‘you are released from the nondisclosure agreements,’” said Biden.
Nondisclosure agreements are essentially contracts between individuals or an individual and a company or organization which often bar people from speaking publicly about their experiences and observations during contact with a person, company or organization. They have become standard features of many employment agreements and have been used to shield sometimes illegal and unethical conduct from public view.
However, a nondisclosure agreement cannot legally bind a person from offering information or testimony to a law enforcement agency or regulatory body and often cannot bar participation in civil litigation.
Many people asked to sign NDAs are unaware of those facts, employment lawyers say."
Debate watch Detroit: A room goes quiet when the subject is stop and frisk
DETROIT — As Bloomberg fielded questions about his stop and frisk policy, the members of an African American fraternity watching the debate in a Detroit bar stopped their conversations, put down the beers, and tuned in to listen.
Al Elvin, 44, a corporate lawyer who is the president of the Detroit Alphas organization, the fraternity that hosted the debate party, leaned toward the TV so he could hear better.
"Oh sure. He's apologizing now!" Elvin said.
A native New Yorker, Elvin said he's so alarmed by the way the stop and frisk policy targeted young black and brown men and by some of Bloomberg’s recent comments on the policy that he wouldn't vote for Bloomberg, even if he wins the nomination.
"I've been that boy," Elvin said, referring to men stopped by police in New York City. "I've been that boy and it's not even the law here [in Detroit]. I've been through it. I have three sons and when you talk about stop and frisk, I start to think of them."
ANALYSIS: Finally, the fight Democrats have been waiting for
Democratic voters just wanted to know who could fight President Donald Trump best.
Now, after more than a year, their candidates are brawling with bare knuckles. It took that long because boxing with kid gloves was a low-risk way for the candidates to ease into the race. But that approach let Trump gather his strength.
Pressure has changed the incentives: Bernie Sanders stretching his lead in national polls, Mike Bloomberg dumping hundreds of millions of dollars into his campaign, and two contests having decided nothing. So, there is an outright brawl on stage tonight.
Democratic voters may be left wondering why the field was so willing to avoid conflict for so long.
Trump has been the focus of most candidate attacks in previous debates. Not tonight.
Mike Bloomberg has taken President Donald Trump's place as the punching bag on the debate stage at tonight's Democratic debate: 50 minutes into the debate and Trump has been attacked five times, while Bloomberg is at 29.
Get the latest numbers at our candidate attack tracker, and see how many times Trump was attacked in previous debates here:
Bloomberg the unity candidate?
In what has been at times been the most contentious Democratic debate yet, there’s one thing that gets most of the stage on the same page: going after Bloomberg.
Bloomberg battles Biden, Warren on stop-and-frisk
Bloomberg was pressed on his police department’s use of stop-and-frisk while he was mayor.
Bloomberg initially said: "Well, if I go back and look at my time in office, the one thing that I'm really worried about, embarrassed about, is how it turned out with stop-and-frisk."
He added that he believed his first responsibility as mayor was to "give people the right to live" and cut down on murders, but he said it got "out of control."
Biden cut in, saying that it’s not about whether Bloomberg apologized, it’s about the "abhorrent" policy.
Bloomberg said that if the stage couldn’t have candidates who were "wrong on criminal justice at some time in their career, there'd be no one up here."
Warren then criticized Bloomberg’s apology, saying he focused on how stop-and-frisk turned out rather than apologizing for "what it was designed to do in the beginning," saying Bloomberg was being willfully ignorant about its impact on black and brown New Yorkers.
Audible reaction from Vegas crowd as Buttigieg jabs Sanders over union support
LAS VEGAS — There was a round of “ohs” that echoed through Layla’s Palace Banquet Hall in East Las Vegas when Buttigieg criticized Sanders for being at “at war” with the Culinary Union in Las Vegas.
Last week the Culinary Union, Nevada’s largest and most politically influential union, distributed flyers that stated Sanders’ plan would “end Culinary Healthcare,” according to The Nevada Independent. The organization, which represents 60,000 casino workers, opposed Sanders’ universal healthcare plan because they said it would eliminate the health insurance the union fought to get for its members.
Two top union officials said they received threatening messages by phone, email and Twitter from Sanders’ supporters last week. Sanders condemned the attacks against union officials.
Roughly 70 people came to the banquet hall for a debate watch party. The event is hosted by Nevada Conservation League, an advocacy organization that describes itself as “the independent political voice” for Nevada’s conservation and environmental community. Organizers say they expect nearly 200 people to attend the watch party.
Early on, Sanders and Warren lead all other candidates in talking time
Thirty minutes into the debate and the tiers on talking time have emerged: Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren on the top, everyone else at the bottom.
Follow our candidate talking time tracker here.
Biden jumps in to defend Obamacare
Biden interjected in the health care debate and forcefully defended his health care plans, saying that Obama turned to him to get the Affordable Care Act passed. He also attacked Bloomberg for criticizing Obamacare.
"The mayor said, when we passed it, the signature piece of this administration, 'It's a disgrace.' They're the exact words. 'It was a disgrace.' Look it up, check it out, 'It was a disgrace.'"
This was Biden's second time speaking after several skirmishes on stage between the candidates. Biden argued that he fought for a Medicare-for-All-like public option that could be paid for by making sure people like Bloomberg paid the same tax rate as his secretary.
Biden is entering this debate wounded after poor showings in Iowa and New Hampshire and lagging in the polls, but this moment, forcefully defending Obama's signature legislative achievement, was his strongest tonight so far.
Warren burns rivals over health care plans
Warren, who supports Medicare for All, was asked directly about how she would overhaul the American health care system and hit Buttigieg over his health care plan, which she called a PowerPoint more than a plan.
She hit Klobuchar even harder, calling her plan a "Post-It note" with a line that says "insert plan here."
Buttigieg was ready with a retort, "I’m more of a Microsoft Word guy." Klobuchar pointed out that Post-It notes were invented in her state, Minnesota.
Warren not sounding out unity theme
Sanders distances himself from toxic online support
Sanders is known to have some fervent online supporters, some real and some... well, who knows. Tonight, he distanced himself from what he termed as the 0.01 percent of his support that has garnered attention for its toxic attacks.
“I disown those people,” Sanders said. “They are not part of my movement.”
Biden, Sanders mirror each others' language on any supporters' online attacks
Buttigieg goes after Bloomberg, Sanders: Let's nominate someone 'who's actually a Democrat'
Buttigieg hit Bloomberg over his wealth and his past party affiliation in his first attack on the billionaire businessman. He said it’s time for someone who actually is from a midwestern city and knows middle-class values to be the nominee. Bloomberg has been a Republican and Independent before running as a Democrat.
He also hit Sanders as divisive to which the Vermont lawmaker hit back saying that he is building a campaign of working people and giving them a voice unlike Buittgieg’s billionaire donors.
"And most Americans don't see where they fit if they've got to choose between a socialist who thinks that capitalism is the root of all evil, and a billionaire that thinks ... money ought to be the root of all power,” Buttigieg said. “Let's put forward somebody who actually lives and works in a middle class neighborhood, in an industrial mid-western city. Let's put forward somebody who's actually a Democrat."
Buttigieg’s attacks on both Sanders and Bloomberg has been his strategy to carve out a moderate lane in the primary and cast himself as someone who can get realistic policies passed.
Candidates came ready to fight
Right out of the gate, candidates came guns blazing at Bloomberg. Warren started, essentially making the direct comparison between Bloomberg’s past controversial remarks and Trump’s. Other candidates joined in, like Klobuchar, Biden and Buttigieg. The haymakers were flying, punches thrown, barbs most certainly traded.
But the debate shifted once Buttigieg went after both Bloomberg and Sanders, who then entered a back-and-forth with the younger of the two ex-mayors on stage.
Bloomberg was attacked 10 times in the first 10 minutes of the debate.
Ten minutes into the debate and Mike Bloomberg has already been attacked 10 times. Pete Buttigieg, another former mayor, and Elizabeth Warren have led the attacks with three apiece, though Warren's early attack on how Bloomberg has talked about women received the largest reaction in the debate crowd. Amy Klobuchar and Bernie Sanders have also taken part.
Get the latest numbers with our candidate attack tracker.
Welcome to Nevada, Democrats
When the Democratic debate kicked off tonight, candidates spoke to voters across the country but perhaps most directly to Nevada’s 3 million residents and 1.27 million registered voters — an audience far more diverse and representative of America than voters in Iowa and New Hampshire, where the first two nominating contests took place this month.
In Nevada, where white residents do not make up the majority, about 43.8 percent of registered voters were black, Latino, Asian or Native American in 2016. White Nevada residents make up about 48.7 percent of the total population, while Latinos make up about 29 percent of the state’s residents. Another 10 percent of the state’s population is black, nearly 9 percent Asian and 1.7 percent are Native American. That demographic makeup suggests that candidates who want to win in Nevada may have to be prepared to speak about, prioritize and fund policies that may be of limited interest or concern to the overwhelmingly white voters in New Hampshire and Iowa.
In Iowa, white residents make up about 85 percent of the population, and in New Hampshire, it's 90 percent.
The crowd is rowdy in Vegas
Oohs and ahhs accompanying the many haymakers getting thrown on the debate stage — something that might encourage the candidates to keep up the direct attacks.
Klobuchar piles on to Bloomberg
Klobuchar took her first speaking opportunity to add to attacks against Bloomberg, urging him not to hide behind his TV ads and criticizing his campaign for suggesting other candidates should drop out so Bloomberg can stop Sanders from winning the nomination.
"I have been told many times to wait my turn and step aside and I’m not going to do that," Klobuchar said.
"I think we need something different than Donald Trump. I don’t think you look at Donald Trump and say we need someone richer," she said, taking another dig at Bloomberg.
Warren hits Bloomberg over 'sexist' comments, 'racist' policies
Warren came out swinging at Bloomberg in the first moments of the debate, using Bloomberg's past comments against him.
"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," she said.
This was a direct hit at Bloomberg’s past reported comments toward women. Warren argued that we can’t elect another billionaire.
"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," she said. "Look, I'll support whoever the democratic nominee is, but understand this: Democrats take a huge risk if we just substitute one arrogant billionaire for another."
Bernie hits Bloomberg on stop and frisk in first answer of the debate
First question of the night went to Sanders, who was asked why his message of a political revolution is a better path to beating Trump than Bloomberg's message.
Sanders immediately moved to hit Bloomberg for past policies like stop-and-frisk, and pivoted to a summary of his campaign stump speech and said he will take on the fossil fuel industry, raise the minimum wage and guarantee healthcare.
Bloomberg fired back, saying he thinks there's no chance Sanders can win.
"If he goes and is the candidate, we will have Donald Trump for another four years and we can't stand that," he said.
And they're off!
Bloomberg ready for the stage
Debate watch Detroit: Local alumni of historic black fraternity still looking for a candidate to back
DETROIT — As they gathered in a sports bar near downtown Detroit to watch tonight's debate, members of the Detroit Alphas, a local chapter of the nation's oldest black fraternity, Alpha Phi Alpha, are sure about this: They want black voters in Detroit to show up and vote in large numbers. The fraternity has plans to work hard this year to register voters and encourage black turnout.
For now, though, most said they're still far from decided about whom they should back.
"I'm watching to see where people are going to fall on the issues that are important to me," said Chad King, 37, an IT professional and a local co-chair of the fraternity's voter education program, A Voteless People is a Hopeless People. His issues include voting rights, slavery reparations, gun rights and the wealth gap between whites and African Americans. Other members listed college affordability and health care among their priorities as well as — importantly — who could beat President Donald Trump in November.
William Lyons, 50, a director with the Detroit Public Schools police department and a former Detroit police officer, said he would vote for Mike Bloomberg for his ability to go "power to power" with Trump, but said he will be listening closely tonight to see what Bloomberg says about his stop-and-frisk policy in New York, which he thought involved racial profiling. "To me, that would be an issue," Lyons said.
Black voters are a key demographic in Michigan, where a drop in black turnout is often cited as a key reason why Hillary Clinton lost this state to Donald Trump by about 11,000 votes in 2016. The Michigan primary is March 10.
Harry Reid addresses debate audience, saying Nevada should vote first
Former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., spoke at the Las Vegas debate less than an hour before it was set to begin and made the case for Nevada to be the first voting state in the Democratic primary process.
"Iowa and New Hampshire do not represent the makeup of the United States," Reid said. "We should have Nevada as the first state to vote."
Klobuchar's team previews debate
Amy Klobuchar’s campaign asserts that the Minnesota senator has had consistently strong debate performances and adds that, broadly speaking, she has never shied away from drawing contrasts with people on stage.
That could include Mike Bloomberg and Bernie Sanders. The newest addition to the debate stage, Bloomberg is going to be a target of the candidates, and, in a shot at Sanders, Klobuchar didn't shy away from raising her hand at the last debate and saying she didn’t feel that a socialist should lead the Democratic ticket. Her campaign expects her to lean into that belief, especially with her position on health care and other issues central to Nevadans.
Her campaign tells NBC News that it has every expectation she will do well tonight — and Klobuchar is one of the candidates who need to do better than expected in Nevada and beyond. The campaign added that authenticity is really important, and Klobuchar really needs to be herself this evening and have it come across in the same way that it did just over a week ago.
A source close to the senator tells NBC News that she needs another success like the New Hampshire debate, noting it would be hard to make the case of a “surge” if she has a bad night. But the campaign stresses that tonight is not a make-or-break moment for their performance come Saturday’s caucus, in part because there has already been a lot of early voting.
Biden, Warren join culinary workers' picket line
Warren says Sanders 'has a lot of questions to answer' about his supporters' online attacks
Bernie Sanders "has a lot of questions to answer" about how his supporters attacked members of a union online after they criticized his "Medicare for All" health care plan, Elizabeth Warren said Monday.
"I've said before that we are all responsible for what our supporters do, and I think Bernie has a lot of questions to answer here," Warren, a Democratic senator from Massachusetts, said in an interview in which she offered rare criticism of her fellow progressive Sanders, an independent senator from Vermont.
"I am particularly worried about what happened in the attacks on members of the culinary union, particularly on the women in leadership," Warren said. "That is not how we build an inclusive Democratic Party. ... We do not build on a foundation of hate."
Biden, Sanders tied for support of Nevada's Latino voters, Telemundo poll finds
Former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., are in a statistical tie for about a third each of Nevada Latinos’ caucus vote, but about 35 percent are aligned with other candidates or are undecided, according to a Telemundo poll released Tuesday.
The Feb. 10-12 poll of 625 registered Latino voters in Nevada found 34 percent support Biden and 31 percent support Sanders.
Support for all the other candidates was in the single digits. Combined with the 12 percent who said they were undecided, the share not committed to Sanders or Biden was 35 percent.
Election Confessions, Nevada edition
This is Nevada’s week to choose. Considered something of bellwether, Nevada will be the first Western state to assign its delegates for the 2020 presidential election when it holds its caucuses Saturday.
Unsurprisingly, many of its residents have already made a decision.
NBC News asked readers to share their innermost thoughts about the slate of Democrats and Republicans in the 2020 presidential race.
OPINION: Bernie Sanders isn't the front-runner in the Democratic race. The moderates are.
Progressives are selling revolution, and it once seemed as though the only question was who would be the leader. Back in October, the party’s left wing of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren appeared ascendant. While moderate Joe Biden was the top-polling candidate, combined support for progressives in the race easily beat Biden’s numbers.
Now that voting has gotten underway, Sanders is the apparent answer. The media quickly proclaimed him the front-runner after he took the most votes (albeit by a razor-thin margin) in New Hampshire, demonstrating that he had consolidated the support of the progressive wing of Democratic voters to lead in the polls.
But the rush to crown Sanders, the independent senator from Vermont and self-proclaimed democratic socialist, as the heir apparent to the Democratic nomination overlooks a central dynamic. Sanders is topping the polls as Biden’s support has eroded and the moderate lane has completely fractured. Yet the combined backing for progressive candidates is much lower than it was in the fall — in fact, it now trails the combined support for moderates considerably.
ANALYSIS: Bloomberg spin machine on full blast
Mike Bloomberg's team did a lot of spinning before the debate to hedge against a poor performance and turn a decent outing into a Hall of Fame performance. Will it work? We'll see. But the mechanics are easy to follow:
- Make it seem like everyone is going to attack him relentlessly, so he's both the most important figure on the stage and the one who is most likely to take a beating. CHECK.
- Set the expectations bar for his performance as low as possible so it's easy to clear. His campaign manager, Kevin Sheekey, has said Bloomberg will defend his record, pointed to the things Bloomberg has done to help progressive causes and noted how many cities and states Bloomberg has campaigned in. What he hasn't done: said Bloomberg will debate like Lincoln on PEDs and wipe the floor with his rivals. Make sure the boss has an easy standard to beat. CHECK.
- Use the pre-debate period to put other candidates on the defensive. Sheekey wrote a memo Wednesday that said other candidates should drop out to prevent Bernie Sanders from winning an insurmountable delegate lead through Super Tuesday on March 3. Force rivals who have actually won votes to defend their existence. CHECK.
Sanders, trying to head off Bloomberg threat, finds his billionaire foil
Lately, there's been a billionaire on Sen. Bernie Sanders' mind.
Not the anonymous legion of billionaires he's railed about for years — but a real one: former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, whose unprecedented spending is threatening to upend the traditional primary process.
"We believe in old-fashioned democracy: one person, one vote, not billionaires buying elections," Sanders said at a rally here Friday afternoon, fresh off his victory in the New Hampshire primary earlier in the week.
The looming Bloomberg threat has Sanders, the current front-runner in national polls, juggling an election fight on two fronts: maintaining an early states operation to keep his other opponents, also no fans of Bloomberg, at bay while holding rallies and deploying more resources to Super Tuesday states like North Carolina, Texas and Colorado to head off the former mayor.
'Sanity' and 'inclusion' among Bloomberg's talking points
NBC News/WSJ poll: Sanders opens up double-digit national lead in primary race
Sen. Bernie Sanders has jumped out to a double-digit national lead in the Democratic presidential contest after his victory in New Hampshire's primary and his second-place finish for delegates in Iowa's disorganized caucuses, while former Vice President Joe Biden has seen his support drop by 11 points since his disappointing finishes in both contests, according to an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released Tuesday.
The survey also shows former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg gaining ground in the Democratic race in the past month, confirming the findings of an earlier NPR/PBS/Marist poll that allowed him to qualify for Wednesday night's NBC News and MSNBC Democratic debate in Las Vegas.
And the poll has President Donald Trump's approval rating tied for his all-time high in the NBC News/WSJ survey, while also finding that the most unpopular candidate qualities in a general election are being a socialist, being older than 75 years of age and having a heart attack in the past year.
NBC News' Hallie Jackson is moderating for two tonight
Bloomberg will not stand on a box tonight
Bloomberg campaign officials tell NBC News that Mike Bloomberg has decided not to stand on a box behind the lectern to boost his height during Wednesday night's debate.
President Donald Trump has for days claimed, without evidence, that Bloomberg had requested a box to stand on during the debate. Trump returned to this theme as recently as Tuesday, tweeting about Bloomberg, "remember, no standing on boxes!"
But the campaign officials tell NBC News that Bloomberg will stand on the floor like the rest of the candidates. Bloomberg was seen familiarizing himself with the lectern set up on Wednesday afternoon during his candidate walkthrough of the debate stage.
Trump has seemed to have a longstanding preoccupation with Bloomberg’s height. He falsely claimed last week that Bloomberg is 5'4". The former New York mayor is actually 5'7" or 5'8", according to various reports over the years.
Biden to attack Sanders on immigration, Bloomberg on 'character'
Two senior Biden campaign officials briefed reporters ahead of tonight’s ninth Democratic debate, previewing the two-front battle we expect to see the former VP wage as he takes aim at what he sees as the two biggest hurdles to his comeback in this race: Mike Bloomberg and Bernie Sanders.
The officials previewed a new line of attack on Sanders that has not been part of Biden's pitch in Nevada so far: immigration. The campaign said Biden aimed to zero in on Sanders' vote against a comprehensive immigration reform plan in the Senate in 2007.
But their toughest rhetoric was aimed at Bloomberg as part of a day of back-and-forth pre-debate sparring between Biden and Bloomberg.
Bloomberg is "profoundly unvetted," one Biden adviser said, noting the volume of stories with problematic past statements. "Sixty-billion can buy you a lot of ads, but it cannot erase your record and it cannot purchase character," the adviser said, echoing comments made by the candidate Sunday on "Meet the Press."
Las Vegas Democratic debate: Growing animosity between Buttigieg, Klobuchar could flare up
In one corner, we have a mild-mannered Midwestern moderate, looking to appeal to centrist Democrats and disillusioned Republicans.
And in the other corner ... we have a mild-mannered Midwestern moderate, looking to appeal to centrist Democrats and disillusioned Republicans.
Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar are competing for the same voters, and with both rising in polls and in prominence, the gloves have come off.
The growing animosity between the two, however, could threaten both of their candidacies, experts told NBC News, especially if it spills over onto Wednesday's debate stage.
Mike Bloomberg bets on zigging while other presidential candidates are zagging
Mike Bloomberg had an unusual request for the hundred or so supporters waiting patiently in the rain: Please go home.
It was an overflow crowd outside from the overflow crowd inside. Inside the Chattanooga African American Museum behind him, 500 people were awaiting the former New York mayor. Another 400 who couldn't fit filled up a second room, where his campaign arranged television screens to pipe in his speech.
So, for the remaining few getting soaked outside, Bloomberg cut them loose. He said his campaign could simply email them his speech instead.
"Don't get too cold," he said.
Late to the game but flush with endless amounts of cash, Bloomberg is running a campaign that bears almost no resemblance to that of any other 2020 candidate. If there are rules for winning the White House, Bloomberg is making a billion-dollar bet that in the America that elected Donald Trump president, the rules no longer matter.
Read more about Bloomberg's unorthodox campaign.
Bloomberg making Democratic debate debut in Las Vegas. His past faceoffs may shed light on how he'll fare.
One Democratic rival took Mike Bloomberg to task over past remarks he's made about everything from domestic violence to policing. Another for funding Republican campaigns. Still another hit him for allegations of buying political favor.
That was in 2001, 2005 and 2009, respectively: the last three times Bloomberg, the billionaire former mayor of New York, stood behind a podium and faced off against political rivals. But by the end of Wednesday's Democratic debate in Las Vegas, the first for he which has qualified, he's likely to have weathered similar attacks — and more.
Read how Bloomberg has been preparing for the spotlight and the scrutiny — and how he's performed in past debates over the years.
Everything you need to know about tonight's debate
The ninth Democratic presidential debate is set for Wednesday in Las Vegas, and it will feature a new billionaire on the stage.
While Mike Bloomberg qualified to make the debate stage for the first time, Tom Steyer, the other billionaire in the race who's been a frequent presence at the Democratic debates, did not.
The debate is the last before the Nevada caucuses on Saturday.
5 things to watch for at tonight's debate
Mike Bloomberg is in.
In a development that promises to shake up the race, the wealthy entrepreneur and former mayor of New York City qualified for Wednesday’s Democratic presidential debate with just hours to spare after a new poll showed him surging nationally into the runner-up position behind Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.
The two campaigns are spoiling for a fight and increasingly depicting the contest as a two-man race. Each views the other as an ideal foil — a self-described democratic socialist calling for a “revolution” to take on the wealthy elite, and an economically centrist billionaire who preaches the virtues of capitalism and hard work.
A weekend spat between Sanders and Bloomberg appears likely to spill over into the six-person debate that will also include Pete Buttigieg, Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden and Amy Klobuchar. The debate will be hosted by NBC News, MSNBC and the Nevada Independent, beginning at 9 p.m. ET/ 6 p.m. PT.
Here are five things to watch for on Wednesday.