Former New York City Mayor and 2020 hopeful Michael Bloomberg declared Sunday on MSNBC’s “PoliticsNation” that he was not “the smartest guy in the room.”
While continuing to apologize for his stop and frisk policing policy, Bloomberg said, “Well, that’s the good news is they think that I’m a threat. If they didn’t think I was, they wouldn’t mention me. So that’s the good side of it. The bad news is you’re the target, and everybody’s going to go after you. But, you know, I’m able to handle myself. And I’m very proud of what I’ve done in life. And my 12 years of experience in City Hall. I think you would agree the city is a lot better than when I found it. My company has done very well. I give away an enormous amount of money. Am I perfect? No, I made mistakes. And I think the key is, if you make a mistake, to be mature enough to learn from it, ask for forgiveness. Give an apology, but change. You can’t rewrite history. People say I made a mistake and then stop there. Then it hurts you twice. First, that I think you made a mistake, second thing is you’re not going—you’re going to make another mistake.”
He added, “I’ve got to learn every time. And I’ve been confident in myself enough to know what I do well is I put teams together, and I ask people, and I delegate authority to go along with responsibility. And I’m not so proud that I think that I know everything. I think I can work harder than anybody else, but I’m certainly not the smartest guy in the room. I want to know what did I do wrong, you tell me, I’ll change, if I think it’s the right thing to do, or if I don’t, at least I’ll know. I’ll have another viewpoint.”
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