Today's Politico Playbook Audio Briefing is presented by Morgan Stanley.

Good Thursday morning, I'm Jake Sherman and welcome to your Politico Playbook Audio Briefing.

And I'm Anna Palmer. There are two distinct ways to view last night's debate.

The view from Manhattan, shorthand for Mike Bloomberg's staff and supporters,

is that the New York City mayor set himself

apart from the rest of the field, and that's good enough. This is the half a billion dollars later

view that he, and only he, can take down Donald Trump. But man, you got to wonder, if we broke out

the truth serum, lugged up that nice office in Manhattan with all the free hors and big paychecks,

how many of the mean-making Bloomberg staffers wish they would have said this about the Las Vegas debate when invited?

Eh, nah, we're not going to get on stage with this crew. We're good for now. See you down the road.

The weakness of Bloomberg's

10-week-old candidacy was painfully evident at the NBC, MSNBC, Nevada Independent Fair last night for most of the evening. He wore a can-you-believe-this-crap look on his face and seemed eager to say, don't concentrate on my past, focus on the fact that I have hired smart people to work for me, and I intend to win because that's what I've done my whole life, but Bloomberg was,

by most accounts, trampled. He was bludgeon on stop and frisk. Elizabeth Warren said the United States can't substitute one arrogant billionaire for another. Amy Klobuchar said, we need something different than Donald Trump. I don't think you look at Donald Trump and say we need somebody richer in the White House. Joe Biden said Bloomberg didn't manage his city very well. Pete Buttigieg suggested Democrats

should, quote, put forward someone who's actually a Democrat, one of his many swipes at Bloomberg,

but also at Bernie Sanders, the frontrunner who is quickly running away with the race.

Buttigieg seemed to be the only person who wanted to lay a finger on Sanders in an attempt

to stop his march to the nomination.

In perhaps the most heated portion of the evening, Warren pressed Bloomberg on just

how many nondisclosure agreements he had signed.

He didn't answer.

None of them accused me of doing anything other than maybe they didn't like a joke I told. And let me just, there's agreements between

two parties that wanted to keep it quiet. And that's up to them. They signed those agreements

...