Mocking Bloomberg’s height

Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren most blatantly took a page out of Trump’s playbook when she mocked billionaire former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s height.

“I want to talk specifically for just a minute at the top about a threat that is coming our way. And it’s a big threat — not a tall one, but a big one: Michael Bloomberg,” Warren said in a speech Saturday as results from Nevada’s presidential nominating contests trickled in.

Other vicious Warren attacks on Bloomberg center on allegations of inappropriate comments to women, that he is attempting to “buy” the presidency with his $62 billion fortune, and his onetime support for “stop-and-frisk” policing tactics that disproportionately targeted communities of color.

But Warren’s swipe at a physical characteristic rather than a substantive issue was undeniably similar to Trump’s frequent taunts referencing Bloomberg’s below-average 5-foot-8-inch stature by nicknaming him “Mini Mike.”

Trump went so far as to claim falsely earlier this month that “Mini Mike” was trying to negotiate the “the right to stand on boxes, or a lift, during the debates.”

Brushing off accusations from women

Warren, however, suggests that it is Bloomberg who is similar to Trump.

“I’d like to talk about who we’re running against: a billionaire who calls women ‘fat broads’ and ‘horse-faced lesbians.’ And no, I’m not talking about Donald Trump. I’m talking about Mayor Bloomberg,” Warren said in last week’s Democratic presidential debate, referring to alleged comments Bloomberg made about members of the royal family.

Bloomberg himself offered a Trump-like retort by brushing off Warren hammering him to release women who accused him or his company of sexual harassment or gender discrimination from nondisclosure agreements.

“None of them accuse me of doing anything, other than maybe they didn’t like a joke I told,” Bloomberg said in last week’s debate.

In response to a May 2016 New York Times expose on how Trump treated women in private, Trump claimed that “the women all stepped forward and said it was a joke.”

A few days after the debate, Bloomberg said his company found three nondisclosure agreements with women who accused him of wrongdoing and would release them from the agreement if they wished.

Calling Sanders a communist

Bloomberg also echoed Trump with an attack on socialist Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders during the debate by suggesting he was promoting communism.

“We’re not going to throw out capitalism. We tried. Other countries tried that. It was called communism, and it just didn’t work,” Bloomberg said. Members of the audience booed in response.

Earlier this month, Trump directly slapped the communist label on Sanders. “I think he’s a communist. I mean, you know, look — I think of communism when I think of Bernie,” Trump said.

Accusing press of intentionally harming electoral outcome

Sanders also faces allegations of behaving like Trump. On Friday, he suggested that a Washington Post report that U.S. officials briefed his campaign on Russian efforts to assist his presidential bid was published the day before Nevada’s Democratic caucuses in order to harm his chances in the contest.

“I’ll let you guess about one day before the, the Nevada caucus. Why do you think it came out?” Sanders told reporters on Friday. When informed of the outlet that reported it, he said, “It was the Washington Post? Good friends.”

Trump on Sunday pushed a similar theory that the story was leaked to hurt Sanders.

“The Democrats are treating Bernie Sanders very unfairly. And it sounds to me like a leak — a leak from Adam Schiff, because they don’t want Bernie Sanders to represent them. It sounds like it’s ’16 all over again for Bernie Sanders,” the president said.

And Trump famously accuses the press of working against him.

“The fake media tried to stop us from going to the White House, but I’m president and they’re not,” Trump said during a 2017 rally. “The media and the Democrats have been engaged in a corrupt partnership trying to impose their will and to thwart American democracy by any means necessary,” he said at a November 2019 rally.

In response to the Vermont senator’s comment, former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg’s campaign on Saturday compared Sanders to Trump, accusing him of “fueling conspiracy theories” and promoting a “toxic politics.”

Turns of phrase

As Sanders racks up wins in early nominating contests, he is getting looser on the stump and using turns of phrase eerily similar to those that Trump uses.

“Don’t tell anybody, I don’t want to get them nervous. We are going to win the Democratic primary in Texas,” Sanders said at a San Antonio rally on Saturday. “And you know, this is also important, the president gets very, very upset easily, so don’t tell him that we’re going to beat him here in Texas.”

Trump uses a similar tone when he tells crowds to not tell others about things he very much wants to be publicized.

“We’ve rebuilt our military over the last three years. Don’t tell anybody, but we spent $2.5 trillion,” Trump said during a rally last week. “New slogan is Keep America Great. But don’t tell anybody,” Trump said at a November 2018 rally.

And Sanders echoed Trump’s frequent boasting about crowd size and those unable to fit in the venue.

“There are a lot of people here, and there are a lot of people outside who couldn’t get inside,” Sanders said at a rally Saturday in El Paso.

Distortions of policy and the past

Joe Biden’s core campaign message is on “restoring” the country after the Trump era. He frequently blasts the president’s demeanor, but even the former vice president has been accused of Trump similarities.

Sanders last year accused Biden of “sounding like Donald Trump” with his criticism of Sanders’s signature Medicare for All single-payer healthcare plan that would eliminate private insurance. Biden said the program would eliminate Obamacare.

The Sanders campaign has also criticized Biden for refusing to admit he was “dead wrong” by voting in favor of the Iraq War in 2002 and falsely claiming that he opposed the Iraq War “from the moment” the March 2003 invasion started.

A New York Times investigation also found there is no evidence supporting Biden’s claim that he was once arrested in South Africa.

Trump often distorts or stretches the truth on his record or accomplishments, though the president’s false claims are much more egregious and frequent than Biden’s.