Why Callout Culture Helps Mike Bloomberg

As New York City’s mayor, Michael Bloomberg subjected many innocent black, Hispanic, and Muslim residents to hyperaggressive policing tactics that flagrantly violated their rights under the Constitution. That authoritarian record ought to disqualify the Manhattan billionaire from consideration for the Democratic nomination, I argued back in November, a judgment shared by writers at publications as different as Jacobin, The American Conservative, Rolling Stone, and CNN.

Now Bloomberg’s record is under attack from rivals in the Democratic primary who are also resurfacing accusations that he has demeaned women in the workplace. My colleague Megan Garber chronicled multiple allegations against him in a 2018 for . In November, a campaign spokesman declaring that “Mike has come to see that some of what he has said is disrespectful and wrong.” And while Bloomberg has long denied that he told a female employee to “kill it” when he learned that she was pregnant, as the employee alleged in a sexual-harassment lawsuit, this week that it found a former Bloomberg employee, David Zielenziger, who “said he witnessed the conversation.” In multiple other sexual-harassment cases, Bloomberg’s accusers signed nondisclosure agreements when settling lawsuits