Bloomberg-- Oligarch... And Dangerous Predator

This could be labelled Part II of a post that began yesterday morning. The word "oligarch" comes from the Greek "rule by the few." The accepted definition today is "a very rich business leader with a great deal of political influence." Michael Bloomberg's photo could easily be next to the definition in any American dictionary. Comcast TV political hack, Jason Johnson, can always be counted on to play the role of a sad fool but when he told Nina Turner that to call his beloved Bloomberg an oligarch is a misnomer, it just showed once again what a bad choice MSNBC made in hiring one of Bill O'Reilly's favorite commentators.

Washington Post reporter Allyson Chu looked at the spat between Johnson and Turner over whether Bloomberg should or shouldn't be labelled an oligarch. Chu begins by establishing that the use of the word is "pejorative" when used to describe Bloomberg and that Turner didn't invent the description on Monday night. "What started," she wrote, "as a routine interview between MSNBC host Chris Matthews and Nina Turner, a national campaign co-chair for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), turned into an argument after one of the network’s contributors took issue with Turner describing Bloomberg, a billionaire, as an “oligarch.”

The term was defined originally as one who favors government by the few. In more modern times, an oligarch became “a very rich business leader with a great deal of political influence,”especially a corrupt actor in Russia.

The events leading to the on-air spat began when Matthews asked Turner how it could be possible to beat an opponent like Bloomberg, who has unlimited resources.

Turner instantly bristled at the notion that a wealthy presidential candidate could use his or her own money to make headway in the race, criticizing the Democratic National Committee’s recent decision to drop its grass-roots funding requirement for participation in debates, which could allow Bloomberg to make the cut.

“We should be ashamed of that as Americans, people who believe in democracy,” she said, “that the oligarchs, if you have more money you can buy your way.”

“Do you think Mike Bloomberg is an oligarch?” Matthews asked.

Turner didn’t hesitate to answer.

“He is,” said Turner, a frequent Sanders surrogate, during the live segment. “Buying his way into this race, period.”

Bloomberg, whose self-funded campaign has drawn scrutiny, was one of the few Democratic candidates not battling it out in Iowa Monday. Instead, the 77-year-old was more than 1,800 miles away campaigning in California, where he has hired more than 200 employees in addition to mounting an expensive national advertising effort worth more than $250 million, Reuters recently reported.

While Turner’s criticism of Bloomberg didn’t appear to shock Matthews, the “oligarch” label drew a fierce reaction from MSNBC contributor Jason Johnson, from the network’s main studio in New York. Johnson hit back at Turner on-air, accusing her of “name-calling” and adding that the word oligarch has “implications in this country that I think are unfair and unreasonable.”

“You’re working for somebody who’s part of the 1 percent,” Johnson told Turner, referencing Sanders. “Do you call him an oligarch? No, you don’t. You say he’s a rich guy. … Just because somebody has a tremendous amount of money doesn’t mean that they’re not necessarily representing the people.”

“Oligarch” trended on Twitter Monday night. By early Tuesday, various clips of the exchange had been watched hundreds of thousands of times. Bloomberg’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

Johnson, a politics and journalism professor at Morgan State University in Baltimore, kicked off the debate, launching into a lengthy rebuke of Turner’s reference to Bloomberg as an “oligarch.” Being rich doesn’t automatically mean “you’re an oligarch who abuses his power,” Johnson said, adding, “The power that Mike Bloomberg got access to was given to him by the voters of New York.”

He warned that Turner’s language could potentially be a problem for Sanders down the line.

“It’s dismissive, it’s unfair and it’s the kind of thing that blows up in your face if you become the nominee and you have to work with Bloomberg three or four months from now,” Johnson said. “That’s the issue that Sanders’s people never seem to want to remember.”

A few minutes later, MSNBC had the pair on a split screen.

Turner immediately slammed Johnson for defending “the wealthiest people in this country over the working people in this country,” stressing that Sanders has always backed “the everyday people of this nation.” The MSNBC analyst responded by pointing out Sanders’s wealth, telling Turner that she should refocus her criticisms on the system that allows billionaires like Bloomberg to exist.

“At the end of the day, the enemy of this country, the enemy of the poor, is not just everybody who happens to be rich, it is a capitalistic system that abuses people,” he said. “If you want to speak about that, that’s fine, but if you want to name-call people that’s not going to help Bernie if he becomes the nominee and he’s going to need Mike Bloomberg’s money.”

Soon, Johnson and Turner were talking loudly over each other as they argued, carrying on until Matthews interrupted in an effort to bring the debate to a close.

“Do you want to change your word from oligarch?” the host asked Turner.

“No, I’m not changing,” Turner said emphatically. “He doesn’t tell me what to say and how to change my words. My words stand.”

Later Monday, Turner took to Twitter, retweeting people who supported her argument and tagging Johnson in a tweet sharing a link to an opinion article about Bloomberg in the Guardian titled, “An oligarch has bought his way into the 2020 race. Why is no one talking about this?” Turner also asserted in a separate tweet that she has “the good sense of knowing what makes for Oligarchy.”

Meanwhile, Johnson kept his commentary on the debate limited retweeting a post from one a viewer who wrote of Turner, “ … did she not respond to any of his actual points and instead chose to attack him specifically?”