Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg claimed that President Trump would easily defeat any of his rival Democratic candidates in a general election.
In an interview with CBS’s Gayle King that aired on Friday, Bloomberg said that he ultimately decided to enter the presidential race because he felt like the other candidates would not be able to beat Trump in an election.
“I watched [Trump] and I said, ‘we just can’t have another four years of this,’” Bloomberg stated. “Then I watched all the candidates, and I just thought to myself, ‘Donald Trump would eat them up.’”
King asked, “You think all the candidates who are running today, he would eat them up?”
“Let me rephrase it,” Bloomberg responded. “I think that I would do the best job of competing with him and beating him.”
Bloomberg, 77, has taken shots from some of his fellow presidential hopefuls for trying to use his money to buy the election. Sen. Bernie Sanders ridiculed his entrance in the race and condemned “the arrogance of billionaires,” while Sen. Elizabeth Warren declared that elections should not “be for sale.”
“I’m not buying any more — I’m doing exactly the same thing they’re doing, except that I am using my own money,” Bloomberg later said in the CBS interview. “They’re using somebody else’s money, and those other people expect something from them. Nobody gives you money if they don’t expect something, and I don’t want to be bought.”
