What does HE have up his sleeve?
When billionaire and former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg entered the Democratic presidential race, President Donald Trump said he wasn’t worried. “I know Michael,” he said. “He’s not going to do well…He doesn’t have the magic.”
But little does Trump know that Bloomberg has been performing for months in a small downtown magic club as The Great Bloombergio.
Bloomberg’s act, which ranges from close-up magic (card, coin) to more elaborate illusions (the “Water Widow,” in which he steps into a tank, hands tied behind his back, and then has assistants lower a black curtain to cover his would-be watery grace), has been getting rave reviews from patrons.
“The mayor is magic,” said Alice Kettles, a lawyer.
“The mayor does magic,” echoed her husband, Bill, a doctor.
“This magic that we all saw? It was being done by the mayor,” said Leonard Gregory, a teacher.
POLITICAL PATTER
Bloomberg not only performs magic but also engages in between-illusion patter.
“He has lots of specific witty remarks about how his administration in New York saw a record number of housing starts, even given the seasonal fluctuations in the measurement, and real measurable gains in environmental management,” said Alice Kettles.
He even occasionally mentions his future political ambitions. “He says something like ‘First I’m going to make this rabbit disappear from this hat, and then I’m going to make Trump disappear from the White House,’” said Bill Kettles. “Or maybe it was ‘First I’m going to make a rabbit appear in this hat, and then I’m going to appear in the White House.’ I don’t know. Something like that. All I know for sure is that the crowd laughed.”
HOW DOES HE DO IT?
Regardless of their political affiliation, theatergoers seem to like the mayor’s act. “There’s this one trick where the Great Bloombergio asks an audience member to pick a card and put it back in the deck,” says Leonard Gregory. “Then he puts the deck in a paper bag. Then he has a sword and he just hacks the bag and its contents to pieces. There’s paper flying everywhere. When he’s done there’s one card on the tip of the sword, and that’s the card that the person picked. That’s amazing! How does he do that?”
Bloomberg, through a spokesperson, said that he could not reveal the secret to the trick.
