Hemingway: The Demise of Bloomberg's Campaign Has Shredded Two Major Liberal Talking Points

Democratic presidential candidate and former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg waves after speaking at a campaign event, Thursday, Feb. 20, 2020, in Salt Lake City. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)

During a panel discussion on Wednesday night’s edition of “Special Report,” Fox News contributor Mollie Hemingway managed to pull two little gems from the wreckage of the Bloomberg campaign.

The group was discussing the extraordinary amount of money billionaire Michael Bloomberg had spent during his brief campaign.

Hemingway pointed out, “We had years where people were saying a couple hundred thousand dollars in barely literate Facebook ads from the Russians caused Donald Trump to win. Here you had a guy spend nearly $1 billion and he went nowhere. It’s a humiliating defeat for Michael Bloomberg.”

Host Bret Baier, impressed, recapped her comment, “So Russians influenced the election with $200,000, or $300,000 in Facebook ads? And Mike Bloomberg couldn’t get more than 50 delegates with $600 million dollars?”

She added, “And this hurts Bernie Sanders’s message, too, because he likes to say the billionaires control everything. Clearly Bloomberg having all this money didn’t do as much for him as Biden having the media and the establishment behind him. I would pick media and establishment over millions all day.”

Video: @MZHemingway and @BretBaier just WRECKED the liberal media narrative about Russia throwing '16 to Trump. Baier: "So Russia influenced the election with $200,000, $300,000 in Facebook ads and Michael Bloomberg couldn't get more than 50 delegates with $5 — $600 million?" pic.twitter.com/eSnamBemn0

— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) March 4, 2020

She is so right. The Democrats have been promoting this canard for years. ‘The Russians helped tip the election to Donald Trump.’ This narrative even managed to find its way into the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment. Democrats used this as an excuse to declare Trump an illegitimate President. Here’s a passage from that report:

We assess with high confidence that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election, the consistent goals of which were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump. When it appeared to Moscow that Secretary Clinton was likely to win the election, the Russian influence campaign then focused on undermining her expected presidency.

Republicans have said all along that the Russians’ negligible amount of spending amounted to a drop in the ocean, compared to the nearly $1.2 billion spent by the Clinton campaign or the $600 million spent by the Trump campaign in 2016.

The failure of Bloomberg’s campaign also blows up Bernie Sanders’ constant refrain about billionaires. Bloomberg grossly outspent every other candidate, in fact, many times over. But in the end, his money didn’t buy him a victory. Hemingway says that Biden had the media and the establishment behind him and that had won the day.

The amount of Russian spending on U.S. social media sites may have been even less than $200,000 or $300,000 in 2016. In the video below, Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) questions Google CEO Sundar Pichai during a December 2018 House Judiciary Committee hearing. Nadler asks, “Does Google now know the full extent to which its online platforms were exploited by Russian actors?”

Pichai says that the company performed a detailed study to find out how much was spent and they determined it was about $4,700.

Whenever Russiagate peddlers are confronted w/ the actual facts, it doesn't go so well. Here's @RepJerryNadler asking Google CEO Sundar Pichai about "the full extent" of Russian meddling activity on its platforms in 2016. The answer: Russian-linked accounts spent $4,700 on ads. pic.twitter.com/MiZaq8HBvS

— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) December 11, 2018

Needless to say, liberals weren’t buying Mollie Hemingway’s analysis. They continue to claim that, in addition to the social media advertising campaign, the Russians hacked the DNC’s server and gave them to WikiLeaks to publish.

To which I say, read my post, “It’s the Server, Stupid; Do All Roads Lead Back to the DNC and CrowdStrike?”