CNN commentator Van Jones blasted Michael Bloomberg’s Wednesday night performance at the Democratic presidential primary debate in Las Vegas, calling the former New York City mayor a “billion-dollar machine Titanic [meeting] iceberg Elizabeth Warren.”
Jones said the Massachusetts senator “took it over” and “prosecuted him,” calling Bloomberg tone-deaf on every one of his policies and issues, according to a CNN clip.
“His answer on women was terrible,” Jones said. “He got completely destroyed on the NDA question.”
During the debate on Wednesday, Bloomberg was asked a question regarding a lawsuit in the 1990s where one of his female employees alleged Bloomberg harassed her by saying, “I would do you in a second.” The former mayor was specifically asked if Democrats should expect more from their nominee.
“Let me tell you what I do in my company, in my foundation, and in city government when I was there,” Bloomberg said. “In my foundation, the person who runs it is a woman, while 70 percent of people there are women. … In city hall, my deputy mayor was a woman, and 40 percent of our commissioners were women.”
In response to Bloomberg’s answer, Warren snapped back, saying, “I hope you heard what his defense was: ‘I’ve been nice to some women.’ That just doesn’t cut it.”
Warren also mentioned Bloomberg’s record of having former female employees sign nondisclosure agreements, or NDAs, for sexual harassment and gender discrimination in the workplace.
“Mr. Mayor, are you willing to release all of those women from their NDAs so we can hear their side of the story?” she said.
Bloomberg defended the NDAs, saying that the terms were established between two consenting parties to agree to keep quiet “for everybody’s interest.”
Warren interjected, saying, “This is also a question about electability. We are not going to defeat Donald Trump with a man who has who knows how many NDAs and the drip, drip, drip of stories of women saying they have been harassed and discriminated against.”
Jones pushed that Bloomberg will need to prepare better for the next debate, scheduled for Tuesday in South Carolina, saying, “He’s got to go back to the woodshed and get it from his team and come back better next time.”