Michael Bloomberg deserves a footnote all his own in any account of last night’s Democratic presidential candidates’ debate in Charleston, South Carolina. First he got “95 percent of the way to saying he had bought and paid for the 2018 election.” John Pohdhoretz explains:

He wanted to score points for helping the Democratic party and bragged he had dropped $100 million to help the Dems take the majority in the House of Representatives.

“All of the new Democrats that came in put Nancy Pelosi in charge and gave the Congress the ability to control this president, I bough—got them,“ Bloomberg said.

Yep. Bloomberg got that close to saying he’d bought the 2018 election for the Democrats. You want oligarchy? You got oligarchy.

And that’s not all. The debate was sponsored by Michael Bloomberg, who supported it with two 60-second ads that provided a merciful break from the yipping and yelling that otherwise suffused the proceedings. The New York Post provides the footnote here.

Giving the thing a twisty sort of postmodern moment, that’s gotta be a first. Bloomberg’s team must have figured that Bloomberg wouldn’t be able to make the case for himself in the free time CBS donated to the event last night and they know their man.

Bloomberg sponsoring the debate that Bloomberg is in is the most Bloomberg thing ever

— Buck Sexton (@BuckSexton) February 26, 2020