The Nation D.C. correspondent Ken Klippenstein said Thursday that while non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) are not unique to former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, his are unusually detailed and could potentially bar discussion of “anything that’s said or done.”
“If you look at the language, I ran this by government oversight folks who sort of know how these things work and they said conceivably, this could apply to anything that’s said or done during the campaign,” Klippenstein said in a Hill.TV interview.
Klippenstein added that while NDAs would be understandable for content such as internal polling or other proprietary material, “if you look at the language of this, this applies to virtually anything that’s said in the campaign and that’s also understood by the staffers… there’s a lot of paranoia on the part of staffers.”
Klippenstein nonetheless described the Bloomberg campaign as “the chattiest group of campaign officials that I’ve ever seen.”
“I guess it’s a little heartening in a way, because it shows that you can buy a huge national staff, but you can’t buy loyalty,” he added, later saying that “the x-factor” is “the degree to which his staff does not believe the message.”
Host Krystal Ball noted Bloomberg’s pitch has touted his business experience and his capacity to “get it done,” both in a general election against President Trump and as president, and asked Klippenstein if the campaign appeared well-run.
“That’s not my impression at all,” Klippenstein responded, noting, “I hear constant complaints about competence. It is well-funded but it’s basically an astroturf association so you have people phoning it in” and “people that need to pay the bills.”
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