Denzel Washington received the Presidential Medal of Freedom at the White House on January 4, 2025. He had been named for the honor in July 2022 but tested positive for COVID-19 the morning of the original ceremony. President Biden acknowledged the empty seat from the podium: “He couldn’t be here today but wanted to be. I’ll be giving him this award at a later date.” It took two and a half years.
Michael Bloomberg had received the same honor in the same East Room eight months before Washington finally did.
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How Bloomberg and Washington Know Each Other
Their first documented shared appearance was June 9, 2004, at the Waldorf Astoria in New York City, at the Boys & Girls Clubs of America Annual President’s Dinner. Bloomberg attended as mayor. Washington was the guest of honor. Both received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Biden, a year apart. They are New Yorkers who built careers in the same city and have spent decades directing what those careers produced back toward the communities that shaped them.
Michael Bloomberg: How a Firing at Salomon Brothers Built a $109 Billion Fortune
Bloomberg’s career was built the morning after he lost his job.
He spent fifteen years at Salomon Brothers, starting as a trading room clerk at nine thousand dollars a year and working to general partner, before Phibro Corporation acquired the firm in 1981 and let him go. He was thirty-nine. He walked away with a ten-million-dollar severance payout and co-founded what would become Bloomberg LP with three colleagues the following morning.
Their product was a terminal on a trader’s desk that delivered real-time financial data. Nothing like it existed in practical form at the time.
By 1984, Merrill Lynch had invested thirty million dollars into the company. By 1986, it had been renamed Bloomberg LP. By 1991, ten thousand terminals were installed globally. Today, roughly 325,000 subscribers use one each morning, and the company generates approximately fifteen billion dollars in annual revenue.
Bloomberg reflected on the firing in a Fortune interview: “Every setback is an opportunity. If I hadn’t gotten fired, I might never have started Bloomberg, never run for mayor, and never had the chance to give back.”
He served as New York City mayor from 2002 to 2013. During three terms, the city’s carbon footprint dropped by 13 percent and more than 500 permanent public art commissions came to the five boroughs.
As of early 2026, his net worth sits at approximately $109.4 billion, making him the 18th richest person in the world. Through Bloomberg Philanthropies, he has distributed $25.4 billion in total, including $4.3 billion in 2025 alone. The Chronicle of Philanthropy ranked him the United States’ largest individual donor for the third consecutive year.
His commitments include $1 billion to Johns Hopkins University to make medical school free for most students and $600 million to boost medical programs at four historically Black colleges and universities. He has pledged to cover the US funding gap to the UN climate body following the federal government’s January 2025 withdrawal from the Paris Agreement. Bloomberg Philanthropies operates across more than 700 cities and 150 countries.
He serves as the UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy on Climate Ambition and Solutions and as the WHO Global Ambassador for Noncommunicable Diseases and Injuries.
Denzel Washington: The Career Behind the Career
Washington has been the national spokesperson for Boys & Girls Clubs of America since the early 1990s. He has never been paid for it.
He grew up in Mount Vernon, New York, the son of a Pentecostal minister and a mother who ran a beauty parlour. He was born on December 28, 1954, and joined the Boys Club of Mount Vernon at age five. He stayed for twelve years, eventually working there as a camp counsellor.
He enrolled at Fordham University intending to study medicine. A theatre production at a Boys Club summer camp changed that. He switched to drama and journalism, graduated in 1977, and trained at the American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco before his film career began.
His film record:
- Best Supporting Actor for Glory (1989), portraying a formerly enslaved Civil War soldier
- Best Actor for Training Day (2001), portraying a corrupt Los Angeles detective
- Two Golden Globe Awards, for Glory and The Hurricane
- Cecil B. DeMille Award at the Golden Globes (2016)
- AFI Life Achievement Award and a Tony Award for stage work
- Honorary Palme d’Or at Cannes (2025)
Gladiator II, released in November 2024, became the highest-grossing film of his career.
Boys & Girls Clubs of America acknowledged his contribution in an official statement: “When Denzel Washington stepped forward to become our national spokesperson, BGCA was a different, much smaller organization. He is the one who brought our brand to life.”
Washington told CBS News what set it in motion: “One counsellor told me, ‘Denzel, you’re smart. You can be anything you want to be.’ And I walked out of that club thinking that day that I could be anything I wanted to be.”
On December 21, 2024, a week before his 70th birthday, he was baptized and received a minister’s licence at Kelly Temple Church of God in Christ in Harlem. Speaking to the congregation, he said: “In one week I turn 70. It took a while, but I’m here.”
In 2026, Here Comes the Flood, directed by Fernando Meirelles and starring Washington alongside Robert Pattinson and Daisy Edgar-Jones, arrives on Netflix. It was filmed from November 2025 through January 2026. He is confirmed for Black Panther 3, with director Ryan Coogler publicly describing him as the greatest living actor. Washington has stated his plan is to complete Black Panther 3, then film versions of Othello and King Lear, and then retire. His Highest 2 Lowest, his fifth collaboration with Spike Lee, is streaming on Apple TV+. A fan-organized campaign, #Cinemzel26, began in January 2026 with participants watching one of his films per week through the year.
The 2004 Waldorf Astoria Dinner
The first documented time Bloomberg and Washington were in the same room was June 9, 2004, at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City.
Bloomberg was there as mayor. Washington was the guest of honor at the Boys & Girls Clubs of America Annual President’s Dinner. The event also honored Viacom. Muhammad Ali, Jay-Z, Ludacris, Wesley Snipes, Isaac Hayes, and Cedric the Entertainer were among those who attended. Getty Images, UPI, and Alamy photographers documented both men together at the dinner.
The Medal of Freedom: A Promise Biden Kept on His Way Out
Bloomberg received his Presidential Medal of Freedom at a White House ceremony in May 2024, among a group of nineteen honorees that included Al Gore and Michelle Yeoh.
Washington had been named for the same honor in 2022. After testing positive for COVID-19 the morning of the July 2022 ceremony, with Biden’s public promise on record, Washington stood in that East Room on January 4, 2025, sixteen days before Biden left office.
The White House citation read: “With unmatched dignity, extraordinary talent, and unflinching faith in God and family, Denzel Washington is a defining character of the American story.”
He was 67 when Biden first named him for the honor. He was seventy when the medal reached him.
A Warning About These Names Online
Both names generate significant traffic on Instagram and across social media, and a portion of that content involves fraud. Bloomberg’s association with finance and Washington’s public trust have made both of them recurring targets for fake investment posts and AI-generated endorsements. NBC News and PolitiFact have each documented Washington as a target of this type of content. Neither man promotes financial products on social media. Any post or advertisement pairing either name with an investment opportunity should be treated as fraudulent.
Bloomberg has given away twenty-five billion dollars and holds most of a $109 billion fortune. Washington has been going back to a Boys Club in Mount Vernon for more than thirty years, without pay, because a counsellor once said the right thing to the right kid. Biden put the same medal on both of them. Washington was seventy years old when it finally got there.
