Democratic debate: Winners, losers, protests, arguments and all the key moments from Las Vegas
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Your support makes all the difference.The six leading Democratic presidential candidates have have sparred on stage in Las Vegas last presidential primary debate before the Nevada caucuses, marking the most heated clash yet in the primary season
Finally joining the candidates who have been vying for a shot at unseating Donald Trump in the key early voting states is Mike Bloomberg, the billionaire White House hopeful who has gotten under the president’s skin in recent weeks thanks to a heavily-funded advertising spree. Mr Trump attacked the former New York City mayor as a “pathetic debater” ahead of tonight’s event, to which Mr Bloomberg replied: “Impeached president says what?”
But Mr Bloomberg's fellow Democrats all saw him as an apparent obvious target, and repeatedly attacked him for his wealth, and his decision to bankroll his own campaign and to skip the first few nominating states altogether (including Nevada).
Enjoying his status as front-runner, Bernie Sanders steered through the night with relatively few attacks on his campaign, and reliably stuck to his general message arguing against billionaires — including Mr Bloomberg.
It was Elizabeth Warren who may have stolen the show, though, with a heated attack on Mr Bloomberg early on for his use of NDAs in his business, which he refused to pull from women who might have accusations to be made against him.
The president wasn’t the only one lobbing attacks against Mr Bloomberg before the debate, either: as the Democrats prepared to spar, Ms Warren warned the billionaire she would use the debate to show how she handles an “egomaniac billionaire", along with several other candidates who said they would take on the former mayor.
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"Somehow or another Canada can provide universal healthcare to all their people, half the cost. The UK can do it, Germany can do it, all of Europe can do it," Sanders says before asking why the US can't. His answer: the healthcare industry and pharmaceutical industry are making great profits.
He then attacks Buttigieg for taking money from those industries.
"I'm the only one on this stage who has actually gotten anything done on healthcare," Biden says, jumping in to note he played a key role in getting Obamacare passed.
Warren is back out attacking Buttigieg and Klobuchar, and says the former's healthcare plan is "two paragraphs".
"OK that's it," Klobuchar responds.
"I am a fan of Obamacare," Bloomberg says when asked if he was against the measure, as Biden had said.
Biden at one point began to interject, with Bloomberg responding: "Let me finish, thank you."
The slap on the wrist drew some gasps.
"The mayor said when we passed it, the signature piece of this administration, that it was a disgrace," Biden responds.
Bloomberg is asked about stop-and-frisk.
"The one thing I'm really worried about, embarrassed about was how it turned out with stop and frisk," he says, before saying that there was a high murder rate in New York City.
He says his first thought then was to give everyone "the right to live", and said they adopted stop-and-frisk. He said the policy was adopted by most big police departments, and that it got "out of control" before he cut most of the stops out.
"Let's get something straight the reason stop and frisk changed was because Barack Obama sent moderators to see what was going on. When we sent them there to say this practice has got to stop the mayor thought this was a terrible idea," Biden says of Bloomberg's stop-and-frisk policy.
He calls the policy "abhorrent".
"I've sat I've apologized I've asked for forgiveness. The bottom line is we stopped too many people... and we've got to make sure we do something about criminal justice in this country," Bloomberg says.
He then says that nobody would be left on that stage if they removed everyone who had ever been wrong on criminal justice issues.
Warren attacks Bloomberg for focusing on the results of stop-and-frisk, and says that the "intent" of the plan was to target the black and hispanic community in New York.
She calls Bloomberg willfully "ignorant" for not putting an end to the targeting policy.
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