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TODAY'S HEADLINES:

Former Republican Mayor Michael Bloomberg set his sights on Bernie Sanders’ extremely online fans, using recent Twitter fights as the basis for a new line of attacks on the Democratic frontrunner.

Meanwhile, John Bolton may have more of a story to tell. In what pretty much amounts to PR for his suppressed book, Bolton warned on Monday that he had far more dirt on the inner workings of the Trump administration.

And lastly, Jeff Bezos pledges $10 billion to address climate change. That’s very nice of him and all, but wouldn’t it be great if he also divested his global empire from the fossil fuel industry?

THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW:

They say that Twitter isn’t real life, but sometimes that just isn’t true.

Unfortunately for pretty much everyone involved, Bernie Sander’s major rivals are doing their level best to drag trivial fights from the internet into the everyday discourse of the campaign trail.

On Monday, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg took a direct shot at the Sanders campaign, saying that the Democratic frontrunner must respond to the actions of a small minority of his supporters online.

Let’s be clear here: Bloomberg is literally a Republican pretending to be a Democrat in order to buy the Presidency, and as such has spent most of the past week getting brutally dunked on by pretty much every leftist with access to Google.

These “attacks,” if we can call them that, are not particularly hard to do: finding a clip of Bloomberg saying something openly racist or overtly fascist is as easy as pulling up YouTube dot com and typing in his name.

But because the internet is what it is, some self-described Sanders supporters have been, well, less than polite in their critiques.

Now, Bloomberg is milking that for all it’s worth, releasing an ad on Monday that is literally just screenshots of people being mean to him on Twitter, including Sanders’ press secretary calling him a quote “racist authoritarian.”

It’s a pity Bloomberg has to put up with this kind of stuff, for the small crime of -- oh yeah, being a racist authoritarian for his entire career.

Sanders, for his part, has released several statements dissuading supporters of any campaign from bullying or harassment. Anyone who’s been on the internet more than five minutes could tell you that really, there’s not much more he could do there.

Could this be the dumbest story of the campaign cycle forced into relevancy by fragile egos and the credulous press? Perhaps, but this morning brings a brand new day of stupidity, so we’ll just have to see.

John Bolton is back in the news, and guess what? His book still hasn’t come out yet. But during a speaking engagement on Monday, he mentioned that when it does, it may have a whole lot more juicy details. Is all of this a scam to sell books? Most likely!

The Bolton book, if it ever comes to be, will likely contain many of the items that Bolton could have testified about in front of the Senate Impeachment trial, if he had been called as a witness.

Republicans blocked that, of course, and now Bolton claims that the White House may try to suppress his book as well. The drama builds! It’s sure to be a bestseller now!

The frustrating thing about all of this grandstanding is that Bolton could have spilled the beans on Trump whenever he wanted. He doesn’t have to wait for his book to come out. He didn’t even have to wait for a subpoena. If he had actionable information that could have affected impeachment, all he had to do was call a press conference and dish.

But instead, we’ve got a big book launch to deal with, and Bolton saying stuff like the Ukraine-Impeachment secrets are quote “like the sprinkles on the ice cream sundae in terms of what’s in the book.”

Look, it’s very likely that Bolton has some pretty damaging first-hand information on Trump’s dealings with Ukraine and the general operations of his catastrophic administration. But will progressives get much out of it if it’s only released in the fashion that makes John Bolton the most money? Probably not!

Jeff Bezos, the richest man in the world, pledged a whopping $10 billion dollars in grants to fight climate change. Sorry, did we say whopping? Considering Bezos has about 120 other billions, he could probably be doing more.

The money will be given out to scientists, activists and NGOs through a new program called the Bezos Earth fund. Bezos’s announcement was timed, coincidentally, we’re sure, to the release of a new Frontline documentary investigation of his massive empire.

It’s not the first time Bezos has capitulated to climate activists to reel in some good PR. In September of last year, he signed a new climate pledge one day before a large group of Amazon employees was due to walk out of work over their boss’s inaction on climate change.

The September pledge committed Amazon to going carbon neutral by 2040. But then, as now, Bezos’s big conservation efforts fall a little flat, when you consider all of the other entanglements his empire has with the oil and natural gas industry.

The same employees who threatened to walk out in September are calling him on this B.S. Amazon Employees for Climate Justice said it appreciated the sentiment, but followed up with a zinger, saying quote “One hand cannot give what the other is taking away… When is Amazon going to stop helping oil and gas companies ravage Earth with more oil and gas wells?” endquote.

Amazon provides cloud computing services to BP, Shell, and dozens of other major oil and gas companies. Bezos might want to take a look at that!

AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES:

A new proposed law in Washington state would take the drastic step of banning all bottled water production in the state, in response to an uptick in corporate interest in new bottling facilities in the state.

Lawmakers in Virginia shot down a proposed ban on military-style rifles, one of the most controversial gun violence prevention bills in a state that has become a flashpoint for the second amendment debate in recent weeks.

Disastrous flooding continues in Mississippi and Tennessee, as public officials warn more rain may be on the way. River levels in some areas are already the highest in more than 30 years, Al Jazeera reported Monday.

In a last, absurd Bloomberg headline: the candidate’s own campaign staffers leaked an advance copy of his public education plan to a quote “rival campaign” on Monday night, which then subsequently leaked it to the Intercept.

Bloomberg’s plan, which will be released in full on Tuesday morning, unsurprisingly falls well short of the public education plans proposed by his progressive rivals.

That’s all for the AM Quickie today! Make sure to tune in to the full Majority Report this afternoon.

#AMQuickie: Feb 18, 2020

HOSTS - Sam Seder & Lucie Steiner

WRITER - Jack Crosbie

PRODUCER - Dorsey Shaw

EXECUTIVE PRODUCER - Brendan Finn