Should Bloomberg’s Campaign Team Let Him Take the Debate Stage?

With the latest polling showing former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has qualified for Wednesday’s Democrat debate in Las Vegas, the War Room is asking whether taking the stage is a good move for the billionaire Presidential hopeful.

Jason Miller, War Room 2020 cohost and communications director for the 2016 Trump campaign, suggested Bloomberg’s debate performance would be weak:

“When you look at his previous debates from 2009, when you look even at his events on the stump as he’s traveling around the country: he’s weak on the stump. He’s very weak. He talks about voters in classes of people, and I think this is a big weakness.”

POLL: If YOU were Bloomberg’s advisor, would you recommend he debate fellow Democrats right now or not?

(Leave a comment below saying why!)#WarRoom2020

— The War Room (@WarRoom2020) February 18, 2020

“I think this is absolute malpractice that Bloomberg’s team is letting him take the debate stage tomorrow night. I think this is the one thing that can trip him up, and they’re sending him head first into it.”

Stephen K. Bannon, host of War Room 2020, noted that Bloomberg has made two large mistakes:

“He went after the Bernie Bros on the far left,” Bannon said in reference to a recent ad the Bloomberg campaign launched. “This is malpractice,” he affirmed his cohost’s stance. “Why would you put him on the stage? It’s better to let people project onto him what is is than see the reality.”

.@JasonMillerinDC: Absolute malpractice that Team @Mike2020 is letting #Bloomberg take the #DemocraticDebate stage tomorrow night

👉https://t.co/mJBryufLnQ pic.twitter.com/v0k8abOSqY

— The War Room (@WarRoom2020) February 18, 2020

Raheem Kassam, War Room cohost and editor-in-chief of the National Pulse, offered an explanation for Bloomberg’s campaign:

“Maybe they want to get this kind of pile on aspect of a debate out of the way as early as possible, and that’s why they would go into this debate.”

“I’m in broad agreement with you, Jason [Miller],” Kassam continued. “I don’t think if you were on his team you would want him to debate. But maybe you want to get the ruffle out of the way while he’s not on the ballot,” given Bloomberg will not officially be on ballots until Super Tuesday.

“You have a whole bunch of desperate candidates right now,” Miller said. “So you have the Klobuchar’s, the Mayor Pete’s, Joe Biden’s. Joe Biden could basically play the Chris Christie role to Marco Rubio from last go around, where he knows he’s not going to win the thing but let’s just dial up a daisy cutter and just drive it right into [Bloomberg’s] heart. That’s what Biden could do.”

DOWNLOAD THE WAR ROOM PODCAST FREE

Bloomberg would not have been eligible for this debate had it not been for a recent rule change, which did away with certain donor requirements.

“The Democrats have certain criteria to be able to get into the debate,” Miller explained. “You [have] to have a number of polls coming out where you had to hit ten per cent in the threshold. Previously you used to have a certain number of donors, or a certain standing or finish in some of the earlier primary states.”

“Obviously Bloomberg wasn’t doing that,” he continued. “They changed the rules to where they got rid of the donor requirement. Initially this was said: ‘why are they making it so easy for Bloomberg to get there?’ But then a lot more folks lately have said actually no, a lot of the opponents wanted that to happen because they didn’t want a scenario where Bloomberg would just skip all of the debates. They wanted to force him into it.”