Sen. Elizabeth Warren said she would accept financial support from Michael Bloomberg after criticizing his spending during the Democratic debate.
On Friday night, Warren, 70, was asked on CNN if she would accept donations from Bloomberg during the general election after she dedicated a lot of time to bashing billionaires from the debate stage.
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Warren responded, “Sure. Because, look, what I believe is that we should not be selling access to our time. You know, this isn’t for special meetings and listen to my little issue. This is about how our democracy should work. I get it, rich people can own more shoes than the rest of us, more cars than the rest of us, maybe more houses than the rest of us, but by golly, they shouldn’t own a bigger share of our democracy.”
The Massachusetts senator said she would accept Bloomberg’s financial support but doesn’t believe that billionaires should be self-funding campaigns or contributing to campaigns via PACs.
“I think we should not be doing these campaigns either letting billionaires finance themselves or using unlimited spending through super PACS, which everybody on that stage was using except Amy and me,” she continued.
Bloomberg, 78, has been pouring tens of millions of dollars into his campaign. The billionaire, who was not present on the debate stage because he did not accept enough small-dollar donations, has vowed to keep his campaign funded no matter who the candidate is to ensure that a Democrat wins in the general election.
Warren ripped Bloomberg from the debate stage, saying, “I don’t think anyone should be able to buy their way into a nomination or to be president of the United States.”
“I think the way we build a democracy going forward is not billionaires reaching into their pockets or people sucking up to billionaires,” she said, adding, “I don’t think any billionaire ought to be able to do it, and I don’t think people who suck up to billionaires in order to fund their campaigns should be able to do it.”
The RealClearPolitics nationwide polling average shows Warren with a slight edge over Bloomberg with the two candidates having 14.4% and 10.6% support, respectively. Both candidates trail Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders, who have 27% and 21.8% support nationwide.
