The owner of one of the most powerful media companies in the world is once again throwing his enormous wallet into the political ring to shape an election outcome.
Bloomberg News owner Michael Bloomberg — who became particularly notorious for dropping an unprecedented $1 billion to effectively buy the presidency for himself in 2020, is dropping another $80 million in an 11th-hour push to swing the 2026 midterm elections to Democrats, according to a new New York Times report.
The goal, per Times reporters Theodore Schleifer and Benjamin Oreskes, is to cut into the GOP’s “financial advantage” and ensure “a sizable Democratic House majority.” True to Times style, the reporters dubbed Bloomberg the “late-arriving white knight for the party.”
The amount will make Bloomberg “will make him one of the largest known left-leaning donors in the midterms,” alongside other bigtime lefty donors like George Soros, who already dumped at least $103 million so far. Schleifer and Oreskes parroted the PR of Bloomberg’s political advisor Howard Wolfsohn, who celebrated his boss’s cash drop, “He believes in participation in our democracy … And obviously the scale of his participation, given his resources and his means, is greater than other people’s financially. But other people are participating in different ways.” Of course, Schleifer and Oreskes only briefly mentioned Bloomberg’s antics during the 2020 election where he treated “democracy” like it had a price tag and buried it in the sixth paragraph.
What’s interesting is that Schleifer is also tracking X owner Elon Musk’s spending on the midterms in favor of the GOP, and consistently makes his previous feud with Trump the centerpiece of his coverage, presumably to make Musk seem politically erratic.
During an October 13 interview with colleague Jess Bidgood, Schleifer first chimed how “If you are willing to ignore a three-month anti-Trump bender from Musk in mid-2025, he’s actually been rather consistent.” In a September 3 item, Schleifer colored reporting on Musk’s midterm “money machine” by highlighting how “it showed that Mr. Musk was back in the Republican fold a year after he had threatened to break with the party and start a third party of his own after sharply criticizing President Trump’s signature domestic policy bill.”
Hammering a similar theme in July when the world’s richest man first announced intentions to spend at least $100 million to maintain the GOP’s majorities in both houses of Congress, Schleifer bellowed how “Elon Musk, a year after voicing deep frustration with the Republican Party and threatening to start a third party, appears to be back in the fold and prepared to spend big in the midterms to help G.O.P. candidates.”
Apparently, when it comes to GOP donors, crucial historical context matters for Schleifer. If you’re talking about liberal billionaires, however, then the embarrassing backdrop just gets a brief glossover.
