After reports surfaced that Michael Bloomberg was considering entering the presidential race, the former New York City mayor confirmed that he was “looking at all the options” in an interview with the Financial Times.
“I find the level of discourse and discussion distressingly banal and an outrage and an insult to the voters,” Bloomberg told FT, adding that Americans deserved “a lot better” than the current lineup of candidates.
The New York Times reported in late January that the billionaire and founder of the media empire Bloomberg had begun investigating the possibility of running for president as a third-party candidate. The report noted his antipathy for the ascendance of extreme positions in both parties’ political primaries, embodied by the nativism of Donald Trump and staunch social conservatism of Ted Cruz on the Republican side and by self-identified democratic socialist Bernie Sanders, who has promised a “political revolution,” on the Democratic side.
Bloomberg — who ran for mayor of New York City initially as a Republican, and later as an independent — has demonstrated a liberal outlook on social issues and is a full-throated advocate for taking action on climate change and gun control, though skews more conservative when it comes to regulating the financial industry. As many pundits have noted, regardless of who the major parties choose to nominate, and independent Bloomberg run would drastically alter the shape of the general election.
The Times had reported that Bloomberg was willing to spend as much as $1 billion of his fortune (estimated at $40 billion, as of Monday, by Forbes) in the course of a campaign.
Responding to reports that Bloomberg would enter the race, Trump expressed his enthusiasm to pummel the new competition: “I’d beat him,” he told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. “We used to be friends,” he said. “I guess we’re not friends anymore.” Trump also told Blitzer he was dubious about Bloomberg’s reported net worth, asserting that his business was too volatile because all someone has to do is invent a “better machine.” He said he was perplexed why other companies hadn’t invented a “better machine” yet.
[h/t Financial Times]
[image via Wikicommons]
