Former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg has come under fire for his past comments about President Donald Trump, with the latest found in a video clip recorded one month after the 2016 election in which Bloomberg declares his “love” for the Republican, Politico reports.
In the video, taken from a talk at Oxford University’s business school in 2016, Bloomberg tells a story about talking to Trump after a memorial service for 9/11. He said that Trump told him, “I saw your speech in Philadelphia,” an apparent reference to Bloomberg’s speech at the Democratic National Convention in 2016.
“‘But you really do love me, don't you?’" Trump said, according to Bloomberg. "And I said, 'Yes, Donald, I do love you, I just disagree with everything you've ever said.'"
"And we had a good laugh," the former mayor added. "If you’ve sat and had dinner with Donald Trump, you’d probably walk away saying everything he just said is bullshit, he can’t be doing that. But you have a good time. He is socially a nice person. Will he be a good president? I hope so. Because we desperately need leadership in the country and the world.”
A senior adviser to the Bloomberg campaign told Politico that “When Mike was mayor, he hired Donald Trump to run a city golf course, and that's the only job he’s hired him for. When Trump was headed to the White House, like most Americans Mike Bloomberg hoped Donald Trump would rise to the occasion. Instead, Trump’s lowered expectations for leadership and failed Americans on issue after issue. That’s why Mike is running to replace him, and Mike’s record and resources are why more and more Americans are supporting Mike.”
The clip emerged not long after a similar video showed Bloomberg saying he’s “a friend of Donald Trump’s,” who he called “a New York icon.”
Theodore Bunker ✉
Theodore Bunker, a Newsmax writer, has more than a decade covering news, media, and politics.
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