Jeff Weaver, a senior advisor to the Sanders campaign, said former NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg was “grossly out of touch with most of America” and is attempting a “hostile corporate takeover” of the Democratic Party.
“When we get on the debate stage this week people are going to be shocked to find out what Mike Bloomberg is really trying to sell them,” he said Tuesday evening on CNN.
WOLF BLITZER, CNN: Joining us from Las Vegas is Senator Sanders’ senior adviser to the campaign Jeff Weaver. You saw some of the attacks that Michael Bloomberg is launching at your candidate, and Senator Sanders is certainly going to have a target on his back after the latest polling showing that he is number one in the latest national poll. How cutthroat is this going to be on the debate stage tomorrow night?
JEFF WEAVER, SANDERS CAMPAIGN: Well, wolf, it is not going to be cut-throat, but voters are entitled to a vigorous approach to the issues and we saw something today — every day we learn something new about Mike Bloomberg, and today we learned that said in order for him to defend defense spending we had to cut Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare, and farmers don’t have a lot of gray matter, and that he is opposed to minimum wages, and opposed the raising taxes on the rich, and gentrification, and on and on it goes, stop-and-frisk.
And he thinks that the ending redlining, the racist policies that kept credit out of black neighborhoods, that by ending that led to the great recession that we had in the 2007/2008 time period and this is not in line with the Democratic voters. When we get on the debate stage this week people are going to be shocked to find out what Mike Bloomberg is really trying to sell them.
BLITZER: Just to point out some of the positions that you just spelled out, he said that years ago, and some of them he has already apologized for. So you don’t necessarily believe that he really believes all of those things, do you?
WEAVER: Well, what you are telling me, Wolf, is he has changed on all of those things?
Well, candidates can evolve on an issue or two or something over time, but a candidate who is completely remaking himself so that virtually every position he has held is repudiated so voters have to wonder what bill they are being sold. The answer to Trump’s right-wing reactionary politics is not a hostile corporate takeover of the Democratic Party or the White House is not the answer.
