TUESDAy, MARCH 3 , 2020. THE WASHINGTON POST eZ sU C3
who was one of its biggest stars.
Lauer, who was fired amid the alle-
gations, has denied wrongdoing.
In a best-selling book last year,
“Catch and Kill,” former NBC cor-
respondent ronan farrow ac-
cused top executives of declining
to air h is revelations about Harvey
Weinstein because the film pro-
ducer had threatened to expose
the Lauer scandal. The network
denounced f arrow’s allegations as
“a smear” and said his reporting
wasn’t ready t o be b roadcast when
he decided to leave NBC and take
the Weinstein story to the New
Yorker m agazine.
[email protected]politics can bring out and even
reward. The things that rightly
turn off so many Americans to all of
it, but Chris could see something
beyond that. He could see the pos-
sibility that politics could also be
used for something noble even
amidst a ll that human frailty.”
matthews, Kornacki added,
“has plenty of i ntellect, but he a lso
wasn’t afraid to wear his heart on
his sleeve. It is what made him so
compelling.”
NBC News has been rocked by
several scandals in the past few
years, most notably sexual assault
allegations against matt L auer, the
former host of the “Today” showHe s ubsequently b ecame a jour-
nalist, covering Washington for
the San francisco Examiner and
later the San francisco Chronicle.
But it was on TV that matthews’s
bombastic style stood out. A fre-
quent guest on political chat
shows, he began his own talk
show, “Politics with Chris mat-
thews,” on the America’s Ta lking
network, founded by roger Ailes,
who later co-founded the fox
News Channel.
In 1996, NBC converted Ameri-
ca’s Ta lking into mSNBC in part-
nership with microsoft and
moved matthews’s program to its
sister network, CNBC. His show
was renamed “Hardball with
Chris matthews.” It moved to
mSNBC in 2000.
mSNBC made no official state-
ments about matthews but re-
leased transcripts of his final pro-
gram monday night.
Kornacki paid tribute to him at
the end of the program. “What I
loved about Chris matthews is how
much he loved politics,” he said.
“He knew about the ugly and un-
flattering aspects of humanity thatstate primaries on Super Tuesday,
raised eyebrows because he was a
key figure in m SNBC’s c overage of
the presidential race. Several em-
ployees said they learned about
matthews’s resignation when it
was a nnounced o n the a ir.
An mSNBC spokesman said the
network and the host “mutually
agreed” to the decision. others at
the network, who spoke on the
condition of anonymity because
they were not authorized to talk
about personnel issues, said mat-
thews’s departure was tied to the
negative attention he’s received in
the p ast 10 days.
Voluble, combative and often
loud, matthews carved out a dis-
tinctive persona during his many
years on t he air. His knowledge and
love of politics came from direct
experience. In the 1970s, he served
on the staffs of four Democratic
members of Congress, including
Sen. Edmund muskie of maine, a
one-time presidential candidate.
He was also a White House speech-
writer for Jimmy Carter and chief
of staff to House Speaker Thomas
“Tip” o ’Neill (D-mass.).sion of france.
He also was criticized for a
skeptical interview with Sen. Eliz-
abeth Warren (D-mass.) l ast week.
matthews asked Warren why she
believes a female employee who
sued former New York mayor
mike Bloomberg accusing him of
telling her to “kill” her unborn
child.
Bloomberg denied making the
statement, and matthews asked
Warren, “You believe he’s lying?
Why would he lie?... You’re confi-
dent of your accusation?” ( Warren
replied: “Why shouldn’t I believe
her?”)
During President Trump’s rally
in South Carolina on friday, mat-
thews mistook South Carolina
Democratic Senate candidate
J aime Harrison for Sen. Tim Scott
(r-S.C.). Both are African Ameri-
cans. And on Saturday, journalist
Laura Bassett wrote on GQ.com
that matthews made inappropri-
ate comments to her and other
women when they were guests on
his show.
The timing of his announce-
ment, just hours before the 14best possible outcome for all
involved, eventual baby i ncluded.
That’s w hat good people do.re: Unwilling father: I agree, but
let’s also understand o ur society’s
irrational responses to
unplanned pregnancies. T he
mother c ould be applying
unhealthy pressure on her to not
abort. He h as every right t o ask
her t o consider getting
counseling f rom a more neutral
source. our society’s hostility to
abortion leads to unwanted
children... and d ecades of guilt
in store for both parents,
including fathers who pay
support dutifully.
It w ill be easier for h im if he
realizes, though, that he can’t
control what she does.
— A nonymousAnonymous: A strong second on
unbiased counseling for them
both, thanks.Write to carolyn Hax at
[email protected]. get her column
delivered to your inbox each morning
at wapo.st/haxpost. Join the discussion live at noon
fr idays at live.washingtonpost.combenefit of maturity, t ime and
perspective, you’ll be a shamed o f
the r est of your l ife.
You got it out of your system here
with me, anonymously. Good. Now
square yourself u p and own your
fatherhood. Not just paternity —
fatherhood. You made the choices
that got you here, just as your
girlfriend made hers, and so now
both of you need to work together
to figure out what would o ffer thesupport for 1 8 years b ut that’s all
I’m willing to do. I’m not going to
be a father to a child because we
got drunk and had u nprotected
sex one time. S hould I l ay t his all
on the line now? Waiting to see if
she a ctually does g ive t he baby up
seems t oo risky.
— Not Ready to Be a FatherNot ready to be a Father: L et’s
see. You blame y our girlfriend
(“She should never have told h er
mom”).
You blame the mom (“this is all
due t o her m om working o n her
emotions”).
You projection-blame your
girlfriend a gain (“she’s g oing to
ruin our lives”).
You blame alcohol (“we got
drunk and had unprotected sex
one t ime”).
Where’s t he p art where you
blame yourself for drinking too
much and having s ex y ou weren’t
ready to have? Being ready m eans
ready for the c onsequences,
including pregnancy.
Don’t l ay a nything on the line
with anybody until y ou look in a
mirror a nd o wn this. Every bit of
it. I f all you want i s to get yourself
off the hook, t hen you’re going to
do and s ay t hings t hat, with theAdapted from an
online d iscussion.Dear Carolyn: I ’m
kind of freaked
out about my
girlfriend’s
unplanned
pregnancy. S he
was planning to have an abortion,
but s he backed out. Now she is
saying s he can’t go through with
it and will have the b aby and give
it up for adoption. I t hink t his is
all due to her mom working on
her e motions. She should n ever
have told her m om, and I am
secretly mad s he did. Even
though they are very close, she
should h ave kept this to herself.
I am not ready to be a father
and w as very clear on that t o my
girlfriend. I’m worried she w ill
change her mind again and keep
the b aby a nd I will b e stuck. She’s
really e motional and confused
right now but all I can see is t hat
she’s g oing to ruin our lives
because her m om stuck her nose
in where it didn’t b elong.
How do I support my g irlfriend
through this pregnancy, w hich I
want to do, while still making it
clear I am not o n board w ith
being a father? I will p ay t he c hild
Every conceivable excuse for u nplanned pregnancy
Carolyn
Hax
nIcK galIfIanaKIs for tHe WasHIngton Postfor b lack Americans.
“It’s been many, m any presiden-
tial cycles” s ince a candidate set up
an office in his county, said Brooks,
a paid surrogate. “Decades.”
o n friday in Blountville, near
the Virginia border, mike spoke in
a Trumpian setting: an airplane
hangar with a gargantuan Ameri-
can flag behind him. Included in
the buffet of pulled pork and cas-
serole were two vats of banana
pudding so big that the candidate
could’ve bathed in them. There
were a couple mAGA hats in the
crowd of 350. A man under one of
them was n amed Craig Widner.
“I don’t like hardly any of what
mike Bloomberg stands for,” said
Widner, who owns an insurance
business, “but I do respect that he
had the guts to show up in East
Te nnessee for an event that’s proba-
bly not gonna work out well for him.”
The main goal was not to win
outright but to walk away with
delegates, and to be prepared for a
brokered national convention in
milwaukee in July. Last w eek, p op-
ular distaste with this strategy
manifested in spray paint (“Eat
the rich”) on the campaign office
in Johnson C ity, Tenn.
“When people make comments
that he’s buying the election, I’m
very put off by that,” said regional
field organizer Kristi Carr. “Be-
cause all I have is awe that a
candidate would invest their own
money in my home state and my
home region that has never had
that kind o f investment before.”
out in Kingsport, mike’s sole“my first answer to that all the
time is: What’s the right price to
save democracy from Donald
Trump?” said Tim o’Brien, a se-
nior adviser to mike, at a
Bloomberg house party in
mcLean, Va., Thursday night.
There, Northern Virginians
sipped Chianti and canned Perrier
and whispered about Joe Biden as
if he w ere a n uncle in hospice care
(this was 48 hours before his defi-
brillation i n South C arolina). T hey
shuddered at the thought of Ber-
nie Sanders, democratic socialist,
for his perceived radicalism and
dismissed Elizabeth Warren, capi-
talist reformer, for her vendetta
against m ike.
What’s a democracy worth? A
year ago, before mike arrived on
the scene, Bloomberg pledged a
half billion to vanquishing Trump.
In Virginia, over the past three
years, he spent $3.5 million t o help
flip the statehouse to Democrats,
whose g un-control advocates now
speak of him with reverence. So
far this year, Bloomberg has spent
$50 million to pepper online plat-
forms with advertising. Now, m ike
is in your facebook feed. He’s in
your Google search results. Every
time you glance at the television,
he’s there. The 2020 presidential
candidates h ave spent $26 m illion
on TV ads in Texas alone; 80 per-
cent of that was for mike, accord-
ing to Advertising Analytics. one
ad cost $4.3 million all by itself,
and said that mike has “la fuerza
para enfrentar a Trump” (the
strength t o face Trump).
He’s created an entire economy.
mike’s campaign officially began
13 weeks ago, but already
Bloomberg has spent more on his
campaign than the Te xas city of
Arlington (population: 400,000)
has i n its annual b udget. The least
senior members of his staff of
2,000 make $6,000 a month (near-
ly twice their counterparts’ wages
on Te am Warren and Te am Sand-
ers). He has deployed an army of
meme makers, enlisted mural art-
ists to transform c ampaign spaces
and h ired a t least one comedian to
secretly punch up his s peeches.
This past weekend he zoomed to
Super Tuesday states in private
jets to headline campaign events
with free b ooze a nd barbecue.
He k nows money m ight n ot buy
him l ove, b ut maybe it can b uy h im
like.
bloomberg from C1 “He’s the best person to win,”
said r ennea Henn, 71, standing in
a sea of “I LIKE mIKE” signs at a
rally at a former airfield in San
Antonio Sunday night. She
doesn’t like Sanders and that
“gimme gimme” mentality she
believes h e instills in t he kids. She
would happily vote for Biden, but
even after the former vice presi-
dent’s boffo victory in South Car-
olina, she is concerned about his
unevenness. “He said he had four
women he wanted to pick for VP,
and he couldn’t even remember
their names,” Henn s aid.
rewind to friday, when mike
hopscotched eastward across Ten-
nessee in private jets: He rallied
1,000 people in downtown mem-
phis, where a handful of p rotesters
hoisted signs that said “oligarch,”
“What is your price?” and “our
Democracy is not for sale.” At a
distillery in Clarksville, near the
Kentucky border, mike corked a
barrel of bourbon in front of a
friendly crowd, while a couple of
dozen protesters outside carried
Trump-Pence flags and signs like
“mini mike t ake a hike.”
“I won’t t alk until the cows come
home,” mike said inside, pausing
for laughter that didn’t come.
Then: “They told me that would
work in Arkansas.” (He’d been in
Arkansas the previous day.)
mike knows h e can’t land a joke.
mike knows that he’s not charis-
matic. mike knows that the New
York City Police Department’s
stop-and-frisk policy got out of
control when Bloomberg was
mayor, and mike is sorry about
that. But he would like you know
that he’s g ood in a crisis, that’s he a
“pragmatic problem-solver,” that
he can bedevil Trump while con-
solidating s upport to defeat him.
Bloomberg’s millions have
helped solve at l east o ne problem,
which has to do with mike’s age.
When 38-year-old Pete Buttigieg
suspended his campaign Sunday
night — thereby stepping on
mike’s paid prime-time “address”
on the coronavirus — the top of
the field got hopelessly geriatric,
with Warren as spring chicken at
age 70. At 78, mike is older than
Biden by nine months, and
younger than Sanders by five, b ut
Bloomberg’s $500 million invest-
ment has bestowed mike with the
appearance of vigor, steadiness
and omnipresence. It has threat-
ened to render sentimental and
obsolete the retail politics of Iowa
and New Hampshire. Americans
shop online and buy what’s on TV,
and that’s where mike is meeting
them. He n ever looks tired.
It has also bought a ground
game for the v irtual candidate.
“We’ve built the biggest infra-
structure that Te xas has ever seen,”
said Ashlea Turner, mike’s state
director. on the ground in Te xas
he’s g ot 19 field offices and 180 paid
staffers, including Amanda Salas,
33, who grew up conservative, sup-
ported John mcCain in 2008, Ber-
nie Sanders in 2016, and now has
settled in the middle w ith mike.
“I gotta look at what people in
my electorate are looking at: solid
Democrat but pretty conserva-
tive,” s aid Salas, while door-knock-
ing Saturday in a Hispanic neigh-
borhood of San Antonio.
The mike campaign has seven
full-time staffers in the remote
islands of American Samoa, ac-
cording to CNN, a s part of a play to
lock down the U.S. territory’s six
delegates.
Te nnesseans, who vote Tuesday,
are shocked to be lavished with
attention by a Democratic candi-
date at this stage. mike has seven
offices in Te nnessee, including
ones in Jackson and Johnson City,
in largely rural areas o n either side
of the s tate t hat rarely see this kind
of action from a presidential can-
didate.
Ernest Brooks, a councilman
from the city of Jackson in West
Te nnessee, accepted Bloomberg’s
apology for stop-and-frisk and
praised his economic initiativesBloomberg supporters hope the eagle flies on Tuesday
canvasser friday w as a 16-year-old
named Carrson Everett. He’s the
founder of his high school’s club
for Democrats (membership: 15)
and president of the county’s soci-
ety for young Democrats (mem-
bership: five). Carrson was origi-
nally for Bernie Sanders, but was
turned off by his supporters and
liked what he heard a t the opening
ceremony for mike’s o ffice i n John-
son C ity. C arrson c an’t v ote, b ut he
can knock on doors.
“I get irritated with Democrats
who are not in red areas because I
think they feel like, ‘Well, I just
don’t need to do anything,’ ” he
said while canvassing in King-
sport. “A nd I’m like, ‘We are work-
ing our butts off out here!’ ”
Speaking of red areas, did you
know mike’s favorite color is ma-
roon? You would if you’d went to
his “women for mike” rally Satur-
day morning at a hotel ballroom i n
mcLean, Va. Bloomberg trivia
looped on flat-screen TVs as sup-
porters feasted on croissants, cof-
fee and speared cantaloupe. Ar-
lington resident Twana Barber
was undecided until last week,
when she was p ersuaded b y mike’s
work on gun violence and the en-
dorsement of a former mayor of
Alexandria. As for stop-and-frisk
and mike’s history of sexist com-
ments, Barber said she is a Chris-
tian who believes in forgiveness
and s econd chances.
“We’ve all had a past, and we’ve
all said things that we wish we
could take back,” said Barber, who
works in public relations. “I want
to see what he’s going to do for us
going forward. And sometimes
that ugly past makes us better
human beings.”
mike was i ntroduced by a dozen
women who have been working
for Bloomberg LP for years. He
took the stage to U2’s “Beautiful
Day” and said: “Good morning,
women for mike. I am mike for
women. Nice t o meet y ou.”
He talked about getting “it”
done, and getting “things” done.
He talked about decency, honesty
and s anity. He t alked about having
the r esources to defeat Trump.
The price of a democracy —
whether one intends to save it or
merely a cquire a controlling inter-
est — cannot be estimated easily.
There are some things money
can’t buy, t hey say.
“I know he’s d one all these com-
mercials on what he’s doing for
black businesses a nd how he’s p ro-moted women,” said rep. A. Don-
ald m cEachin ( D-Va.), a Biden s up-
porter who has taken potshots at
Bloomberg on Twitter, “but that
doesn’t relieve the angst, especial-
ly among younger voters.”
Enthusiasm. fervor. Youthful
idealism. Bernie Sanders support-
ers have it, and it’s not for sale. one
poll of Virginia, which also votes
Tuesday, h ad mike tied f or first with
Sanders earlier this month; a more
recent poll placed him third, with
Biden at the top. mike was polling
third in Te xas, which had the larg-
est population increase of any s tate
in the country from 2018 to 2019.
It’s diverse, and getting more so:
Last year for every new white resi-
dent, there were n ine new Hispanic
residents — a demographic mike
has been courting. The state is
young and getting younger (medi-
an age 34). Each year it inches to-
ward becoming a blue state, and
mike thinks he can finally wrest it
away f rom republicans.
In Texas, on the final weekend
before Super Tuesday, the cam-
paign decided that San Antonio
should be home to one of their
biggest pushes in the state. on
Saturday morning, marine biolo-
gist Paige Newman, 55, showed up
to Bloomberg HQ and quickly re-
alized t hat she w as the o nly person
not being paid to be there. This
was the first time Newman had
ever volunteered for a campaign.
She wants Trump out and thinks
that mike is the most credible
candidate on climate change. His
candidacy is not a high-stakes
gamble, Newman believes. It’s a
smart bet.
She walked down Coyote Hill
road and mustang ridge, in the
northeast suburbs o f San Antonio,
her phone open to mike’s canvass-
ing app. In one driveway was a
man with a long brown beard,
sleeves of tattoos and a shirt that
read: “So far this is the oldest I’ve
ever been.” Newman approached.
“Nope, n ope, n ope,” s aid Atticus
mcCoy, 37. America has a rich guy
in the White House, he said. “We
don’t n eed another.”
He said he prefers the candi-
date who believes that billionaires
— including Bloomberg, and
therefore “mike” — should not ex-
ist.
“I like Bernie,” m cCoy told N ew-
man, “but he’s n ever g oing to win.”
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]Jada YUan tHe WasHIngton Post
C arrson everett, 16, is mike bloomberg’s only canvasser in
Kingsport, tenn. Carrson was originally for sen. bernie sanders
but was turned off by his supporters.then went to another commercial
break. He returned to present an
otherwise normal episode of
“Hardball,” discussing the presi-
dential election.
mSNBC has not announced
matthews’s replacement, which
suggests his resignation was as
sudden and unexpected as it ap-
peared to viewers. A series of inter-
im hosts will fill in for him, a
spokesman said.
His departure c apped a week o f
embarrassments.
matthews apologized last week
for comparing Sen. Bernie Sand-
ers’s victory in the Nevada Demo-
cratic caucuses to the Nazi inva-
mAttHews from C1
Matthews
announces
resignation
during show
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