Bloomberg scraps PR blitz for Olivia Nuzzi show after liberal backlash: report
Bloomberg scrapped a publicity blitz for a new show featuring political pundit Olivia Nuzzi after a left wing-led online campaign slammed the New York magazine reporter for an exposé on President Biden’s mental decline, according to a report.
Nuzzi, the magazine’s acclaimed Washington correspondent, was tapped by Bloomberg’s TV unit to host an interview show, “Working Capital,” earlier this year and had planned a splashy rollout for its debut in mid-July.
However, an article she wrote for New York magazine headlined “The Conspiracy of Silence to Protect Joe Biden” published on July 4 sparked backlash from liberals on X — prompting Bloomberg to change its plans and instead quietly launch the show, according to Semafor co-founder Ben Smith.
Nuzzi, 31, confirmed Bloomberg was swayed by the online outrage.
“I have no illusions about massive corporate media entities and their tolerance for even the faintest murmurs of a PR crisis, so I can’t say I was surprised, but I was disappointed,” she told Semafor.
Bloomberg did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Her exposé on the 81-year-old president — which followed Biden’s disastrous debate — detailed a “conspiracy” to hide the Democrat’s mental decline.
Nuzzi’s story reinforced concerns that Biden was not fit to serve another term and detailed the White House’s grip on the president’s public image.
“His words as always had a habit of sliding into a rhetorical pileup, an affliction that had worsened in the four years since he began running for president for the third time in 2020,” Nuzzi wrote in her July article.
Nuzzi claimed that Biden “could not spend too much time in the wild” — especially not in environments with “wobbly variables” that needed to be “managed aggressively.”
“The worry is not that Biden will say something overly candid, or say something he didn’t mean to say, but that he will communicate through his appearance that he is not really there,” Nuzzi wrote.
Agitated liberals took to X to bash the reporter and complained about the cover art paired with the story, which showed a cartoon Biden wearing his signature shades with his mouth hanging open.
“When I write something that agitates the right, I am accused of being a liberal activist,” Nuzzi told Semafor. “When I write something that agitates the left, I am accused of being a conservative activist.”
Some critics also dug into Nuzzi’s digital footprint, uncovering years-old posts that jabbed President Barack Obama.
After Obama said he missed being able to skip wearing a tie, Nuzzi tweeted: “You don’t have to wear a tie in Kenya!”
The New York Magazine reporter retweeted a photo of Obama and a child eating pie with their mouths open and captioned it: “Kenyan Anti-Colonial Shows Teeth To Small Child.”
Dems said the posts were clearly racist.
But Nuzzi’s defenders have said the posts were comedic in the context of the times, when Nuzzi may have been poking fun at racist conspiracy theories which claimed the first African-American president was born in Kenya and forged his birth certificate.
“I know a lot of reporters who long ago made the shrewd decision to delete all of their old posts to protect themselves,” Nuzzi told Semafor.
While she said she would not judge reporters for deleting their past posts, she said being a journalist means meeting people in “gray areas.”
“I see an effort to conceal jokes I made in the context of the internet of five or 10 or 15 years ago as a kind of dishonesty that I am not comfortable engaging in,” she said.
X users slammed the Semafor reporter for publishing Nuzzi’s response.
“Maybe no one wants to watch @Olivianuzzi because she’s a racist piece of s–t, Ben,” one X user posted.
“It is embarrassing how men in journalism constantly have to cover for Olivia Nuzzi being bad at her job,” another X user posted.
