Bloomberg campaign targets Trump's relationship with the military
The Bloomberg campaign argues that Washington needs a 'steady leader who will honor those who serve'; Bloomberg 2020 campaign manager Kevin Sheekey weighs in.
President Trump claimed Thursday that if Mike Bloomberg doesn’t win the Democratic presidential nomination, the billionaire business and media mogul will spend “very little of his money” to help the eventual nominee defeat the Republican incumbent -- despite claims to the contrary.
Taking aim at the former New York City mayor, Trump tweeted on Thursday morning that “Mini Mike Bloomberg is playing poker with his foolhardy and unsuspecting Democrat rivals. He says that if he loses (he really means when!) in the primaries, he will spend money helping whoever the Democrat nominee is. By doing this, he figures, they won’t hit him as hard....during his hopeless 'presidential' campaign. They will remain silent!”
The president then claimed: “The fact is, when Mini losses, he will be spending very little of his money on these 'clowns' because he will consider himself to be the biggest clown of them all -- and he will be right!”
This prediction by Trump would appear to fly in the face of plans by an allied Bloomberg group to spend millions attacking Trump over the airwaves regardless of whether Bloomberg wins.
Bloomberg quickly fired back.
“Obsessed much? It shouldn't be this easy to distract the President of the United States,” he responded on Twitter.
Bloomberg has repeatedly said he would back the eventual nominee, regardless of whether he captures the nomination. And earlier this month his presidential campaign manager said that Bloomberg would fund whomever wins the nomination.
“Mike Bloomberg is either going to be the nominee or the most important person supporting the Democratic nominee for president,” campaign manager Kevin Sheekey told NBC News. “He is dedicated to getting Trump out of the White House.”
BLOOMBERG 2020 AD SPENDING UP TO A QUARTER OF A BILLION DOLLARS
And Bloomberg, through a super PAC, went up in November with a massive $100 million ad buy to run digital spots that attack the president in the crucial general election battleground states of Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Arizona.
The ads – which Bloomberg’s team says will run through the end of the presidential primary season, even if Bloomberg doesn’t win the nomination – do not feature him beyond the legally required disclaimers.
In his tweet, Bloomberg also linked to a Mediate story on how ‘Fox and Friends’ spotlighted a new TV commercial by Bloomberg that refers to an alleged incident in which Trump – at a Pentagon briefing – verbally attacked military leaders in the room.
The narrator in the ad calls Trump “an erratic and out of control president.”
Bloomberg flirted with a White House run early last year. But in March, with former Vice President Joe Biden gearing up for a presidential run, Bloomberg decided against launching a campaign because he felt he and the former vice president would split the center-left Democratic vote.
But in late November -- with Biden battling other top-tier contenders Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts as well as then-South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg -- Bloomberg jumped into the race. He said that he was concerned none of the current candidates could defeat Trump in next year's election.
He has already spent a quarter-billion dollars to run ads on behalf of his White House bid.
