The New Yorker Radio Hour - President Mike?

Episode Date: March 2, 2020

Eleanor Randolph finished her biography of Michael Bloomberg in June, 2019, just as the former mayor decided not to run for President. “He didn’t want to go on an apology tour,” Randolph tells David Remnick. Bloomberg knew he would be called to answer for his vigorous pursuit of unconstitutional stop-and-frisk policing, for accusations against him of sexual misconduct, and for his history as a Republican. Ultimately, Bloomberg not only entered the race but has spent more than four hundred million dollars on political ads to defeat another New York billionaire, the incumbent. Randolph and Andrea Bernstein, a reporter for WNYC who covered Bloomberg’s three terms as mayor, sit down with David Remnick to discuss the candidate’s time in Gracie Mansion, his philosophy of governing, and his philanthropy. Whereas Trump’s political contributions have been unabashedly transactional, Bloomberg’s generous philanthropy also has an expected return. “All the money that he gave to philanthropies and charities were a way of doing good in the world, sure, but they were also a way of making him more powerful as mayor,” Bernstein says. “Everything with Bloomberg, there’s a countervailing thing. Something benefits somebody: it also might benefit him, it also might benefit billionaires from Russia.” New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

From One World Trade Center in Manhattan, this is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. I think we have two questions to face tonight. One is, who can beat Donald Trump? And number two, who can do the job if they get into the White House? And I would argue that I am the candidate that can do exactly both of those things. Michael Bloomberg is running an unprecedented, unusual. and decidedly plutocratic campaign for the Democratic nomination for president. Until recently, the former New York mayor's campaign

was one gigantic ad buy, a self-financed coast-to-coast barrage of TV commercials worth hundreds of millions of dollars. He was barely a presence on the stump, and yet he was climbing in the polls. But when Bloomberg finally went public live at a debate in Las Vegas, it was as if someone had ripped back the curtain

on The Wizard of Oz. We have a very few non-disclosure agreements. How many is that? Let me finish. How many is that? None of them accuse me of doing anything other than maybe they didn't like a joke I told. And let me just put, and let me point, there's an agreement. Eleanor Randolph is the author of a biography of the former mayor called The Many Lives of Michael Bloomberg.

And Andrea Bernstein watched Michael Bloomberg's approach to governing right up close. She covered Bloomberg's mayoral terms, all three of them, for W. NYC, and I caught up with them both earlier this week. Eleanor, you finished writing a biography of Michael Bloomberg in June of 2019. Right. Just at the very moment when he decided not to run for president. What was his thinking then? First of all, he said he didn't want to go on an apology tour, you know.

He wasn't going to apologize. And he also mentioned the fact that by the time Ronald Reagan was leaving office, he was Gaga. Meaning his age wasn't there either. He's now 78 years old. That's right. So he had convinced himself that it was too late. And so all of a sudden he starts thinking, what, to convince himself to run for precedent? I'm no longer going to be 78.

I mean, biology is going to reverse itself. He once said to me that when he went to the doctor, the doctor said, you're going to die, but not of anything you have now. And so that was his way of saying he was, you know, in good physical shape. And so he told his friends that people were calling him all the time and telling him he needed to get in. You've covered Bloomberg for years when he was mayor. You've certainly watched him very carefully ever since. Isn't that the nature of the Bloomberg universe? People tell me things that I kind of want to hear?

Well, I mean, I think, yes, mostly, although he is somebody that is better than most at discarding unwelcome facts. By discarding, I mean considering things and changing course. I think it's very hard once you've been the mayor of New York City and you're the star of the show every day and the press always wants to talk to you to say goodbye. So anything that argues for you to reenter that political stage, you are going to give a special weight towards. I think no matter how you feel about Michael Bloomberg's politics or his record as mayor for three terms that you would have to acknowledge that he bought that office. Is that, am I wrong to say this? He spent over $70 million the first time he ran for mayor, which was shocking. I mean, I think Giuliani spent somewhere in the area of.

10 million. So that was the scale. It was so off the scale. Now, a lot of things happened that election year that pushed the mayoralty towards Bloomberg. I think obviously the most significant thing that happened was 9-11, which enhanced the stature of Rudy Giuliani, so that when he endorsed Bloomberg, it really meant something. But had Bloomberg not spent $70 million, I think there is no question that he would have even been a contender. He spent $100 million the second time around and an equal amount the third time around.

Eleanor, Bloomberg has now spent hundreds of millions of dollars, mainly on television ads, but also on a web strategy and staff and much else. One of the most famous ads that he's put on is to show how deeply he's

associated with Barack Obama. I have heard from the horse's mouth from Bloomberg in private that he had incredible content for Barack Obama as a politician in many ways. Who's he kidding? You know, one of the things you have to say is that this is a guy, he's worth now, I'm not sure exactly, probably $61 billion. $64 billion, although yesterday was a rough day at the stock market. Yeah, so it may be closer to 61 today. So, I mean, he wants to use that money to change the world. And what you're seeing right now is

his own campaign, but mainly he's trying to get rid of Trump. And most of those ads, if you watch them carefully, they're designed to soften Trump up and to make sure that whoever the Democratic nominee is, that person will have an easier go. But he's not making it easier, particularly on Bernie Sanders. He's attacking Sanders pretty hard. Do you think if Sanders prevails in the primary, that Mike Bloomberg will go on spending many, many millions of dollars to support Sanders against Trump? I don't know how many, many millions. You think he might recede? My suspicion is that if he's not the nominee and that Bernie is the nominee, he will start

focusing on the Senate. Right now, they are talking about how worried they are about whether Bernie will cause problems down ballot. Michael Bloomberg, and I see this in your biography, there's a struggle, between the good Michael Bloomberg, which you can describe, and let's just say the far less good Michael Bloomberg, and comments about women, stop and frisk, all kinds of policy decisions that were really demonstrably off base or wrong. But overall, a personality that is not,

let's just say not the most generous in the world, how did you come down on him when you finished this project? Well, you know, people often ask me if I like him, And I have to say that I see this guy improving with age. I mean, I would not have liked him when he was on Wall Street, you know, at Solomon Brothers. He was a total jerk back then. And he seems to learn from his own mistakes. I think Stop and Frisk is a perfect example of it.

He and the police commissioner, Ray Kelly, decided that they really needed to get these guns off the streets. But even at the time, there was considerable criticism. Right. Well, this was abusive of people, particularly black and brown people. Well, that's what I was going to say. They sort of lost the understanding of what was happening on the streets. They were so busy focused on the guns that they didn't see what was happening to the human beings. And it took the courts to declare that it was unconstitutional. And it took Bloomberg a very long time to realize that it was wrong.

And his apology right before he ran, a lot of people felt it was too little and too late. Did you? I felt that he needed more understanding or to state more about how people were damaged by the stop and frisk. I think it was very apparent while it was going on. And, I mean, not only were there the lawsuits, but, I mean, W.N. NYC did a whole bunch of stories about stop and frisk, and the numbers were staggering. One story that I just went back and looked at recently showed that there were 120,000 stop and frisk of middle school-aged boys. It was very much a criticized policy at the time, and Bloomberg was asked a lot about it.

Oh, right. But he kept saying the same thing, which was that if they stopped this version of stop and frisk, that the crime rate would go up, what he has never. explained very well is why they decided to just sort of let the police force go out and stop every kid who had a Coke bottle in his pocket. And

it was, you know, this, if you want to look at Bloomberg's years as mayor, that is the big hole in his legacy. And so he still has to answer for it time after time.

Eleanor Randolph and Andrea Bernstein, talking about Michael Bloomberg. We'll be back in a moment. How did he use his money, his personal fortune, to neutralize political opposition in the city? Well, he used it. He gave money away to many of the charities in New York City. And some of those people really helped him out in 2008 when he wanted to run again in 2009. And so as he gives out money, he clearly expects people to give back or support him.

Absolutely. I mean, I would hear that too. Cultural institutions. I mean, you just have to be a person alive and attending a museum or a theater in New York City at any time. And the name Bloomberg, Bloomberg Philanthropies is there. He's given enormous amounts of money to environmental organizations. There's a lot of people who don't need to be told and didn't need to be told, but understood that they're one of the...

their major funders was also the mayor of New York City. And this was, I mean, sort of with Bloomberg, it was topsy-turvy. As someone who sort of covered campaign finance and corruption would always sort of trace the money upwards. So look at who was giving. Nobody gave to Bloomberg. He gave two people with the expectation that it would enhance his power. And frequently it did. Do you see that as a form of corruption? I see that as a form of excessive use of money and power in politics. And, it, without a doubt, stifled people who might have spoken out, who might have had something to say, but we're afraid to. And I think that is the, I mean, I think it's not like, you know, he's not in any way a sort of transactional businessman like Trump, where Trump says, that's what I want to get to. You've written this excellent book on the Trump family, the Kushner's, and the use of money. How do you compare Trump to Bloomberg? So it's interesting because obviously they are both. New York, very rich men. But Trump really came from this sort of oligarchic model of government, where he understood and his father before him that to get things out of New York City government, they would pay. So they would support a politician through campaign contributions, through hiring people, through a variety of methods, and they would expect very directly that they would get something in return. People would say to me, official after official,

very senior levels. I know absolutely why he gave me that because he called me and he told me. And he said, I gave you $20,000. Where is my permit? Where is my tax package? And Bloomberg is not that way. He is not that kind of direct transactional politician who believes you pay somebody and you get something directly. And yet, he, while he was mayor, gave. many, many hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Republican Party. He was a Republican. He gave many, I think millions of dollars to the Republican National Committee. All of the money that he gave to philanthropies and charities were a way of doing good in the world, sure, but they were also a way of making him more powerful as mayor and giving him an advantage that someone without all those billions would not have been able to have. There's another point of comparison. When when Trump initially declared for the presidency. It was thought, and I think it's

pretty confirmed, that really what he was aiming to do was enhance the brand, that he'd run for president, he'd get endless free media, his speaking fees would go through the roof, maybe he'd start a television network, something good would happen to him commercially,

but he'd lose. Right. And this freakish thing happened, he won. But he set out wanting a certain thing. What does Bloomberg want by running? You know, I actually think that he would love to be president. He would love to run the country. He said that. He told his friends in college that. That goes way, way back. And, you know, he told his friends in college that he'd like to be president. Yep, he did, you know. And I think one of the things you'd see if he were elected president, you'd see a manager take over the White House. He talks about himself. He talks about himself.

as a manager, a decider, a person who likes to make decisions. And one of the things he says very often is that the first decision you make if you're running a new corporation is you find the best people you can hire. People who are smarter than you are usually. Don't they all say that? No, they don't. No, they don't. For him, it's really, I mean, I think first of all, he spends limitless amounts of money on staff and does attract talented staff. And he does. I mean, he ran on, when he ran for mayor the first time, it was the same thing. He said, I'm going to manage this city well. And I thought, well, what does that mean? But it's not very sexy.

I mean, I actually, I mean, I actually think it did mean something. I actually think that sort of after the tumult of, forgive me, but that's meant meant to sound anti- ideological. But isn't it itself a form of ideology? In other words, that the existing order is exactly as it should be. and I'll just run it well? No, I mean, what I think he's saying is that if he took over the white, I mean, you look at how the White House has run now. And, you know, there's a there. You don't think it's run well? I think I can run it better. I think Trump called it a humming machine. Oh, yeah, right, of course.

But I think the other thing about how he would be president and how different it would be, it would be just, it would just be quieter. You know, you would just, you wouldn't, he was better, I think, than Trump about seeing the press. But, you know, he still would have to answer all the tough questions. Is he a misogynist, Andrew? Well, I don't. I mean, I would say that he has largely empowered women in his career and as a political figure. I mean, it was a very different time then, and it was interesting because, I was sort of going back and looking at the coverage of Bloomberg, and it was still very much a man's world, sort of the who had power, who had say, who the chief political reporters were at the time. So it's hard to sort of judge how he would be received if he behaved the way he behaved as mayor in today's standards.

Eleanor, the question of women and misogyny, which came up certainly in the first debate and has come up before, and you cover it quite well in your book. How do you come down on that question with him? First of all, he came from the culture of Wall Street, which was very anti-female. And his companies kind of started out with that culture, some of that culture. And you could see over the years that he began to move away from that. And if you look at the passage of a person's life, which you do when you start writing a biography, you know, they either get better and learn or they don't. And one of the things that happened to him is that he began to realize that some of the best people he had working for him were women. But it coexist with the history of non-disclosure agreements, with remarks that you quote copiously in your book that are, it's kind of late in the day for them to be excused in any serious way, aren't they?

He made a couple of really stupid remarks when he was mayor, you know, and I don't think he could resist. There was a, I've often thought that one of the reasons he was so stiff as a speaker was that he was trying to resist saying some really smart-ass remarks. You know, he used to be so formal in City Hall press conferences. I mean, years after he knew everybody's first name, he would be yes, miss, like he was meeting you for the first time. I know. Neither of you think he's, I don't want to read this wrong.

You're somewhat forgiving about this. Well, look, I think he was a good mayor. I mean, I don't like everything he did. But, you know, the anti-smoking, the 3-1-1, the Roosevelt Island School. And in fact, I would even argue that at least in the beginning, he took over the school system. And his purpose was to try to improve the education for kids who generally went to schools that just, you know, sort of waved them through at the very, very best. So I always felt that if, on balance, he was a good mayor. Andrew, do I agree?

Do I agree that on balance he was a good mayor? Yeah. I think he was incredibly complicated. I think he did many good things for sure. I don't think I would pass the same judgment as Eleanor has. I mean, because I think that so many of the things that he did, even something like bike lanes, which were great and I love and use and wish there were more of. but they were also, and they would say this, a way that they were going to attract more international companies.

So I feel like... Well, also, and calm traffic. That was the main thing. Right. I mean, I think that there's sort of, there's so many kind of, I think, as Eleanor was saying, everything with Bloomberg, there's a countervailing thing. So something benefits somebody. It also might benefit him.

It also might benefit billionaires from Russia. There was one point where in 2013 he gave an exit interview to New York Magazine, and he said, yes, let all the Russian billionaires move to New York City. We welcome them. They will pay taxes. Well, that is something that obviously makes life difficult for ordinary people in New York City who want to buy housing. And during Bloomberg's time as mayor, housing prices nearly doubled in parts of Manhattan. So it's this complicated set of things that I would imagine as president that he would be both addressing issues but not making sweeping fundamental changes. Andrea Bernstein, Eleanor Randolph, thanks so much. Thank you. Thank you. Eleanor Randall's book is The Many Lives of Michael Bloomberg. Andrea Bernstein is the author of American oligarchs, the Kushners, the Trumps, and the

marriage of money and power. And she's the co-host of the Trump Inc. podcast from WNYC and ProPublica. I'm David Remnick, and this is the New York. Radio Hour. Thanks for listening and see you next week. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbus of Tune Arts, with additional music by Alexis Quadrado. This episode was produced by Alex Barron, Emily Boutin, Ave Carrillo,

Riannon-Corby, Cala Leah, David Krasnow, Gauphin and Putubuele, Louis Mitchell, Michelle Moses, and Stephen Valentino, with help from Alison McAdam, Morgan, Flannery, Meng Fei Chen, and Emily Mann. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.