Trump vs. Bloomberg, more than a Twitter battle
President Donald Trump could hardly contain his glee.
“WOW, BLOOMBERG IS A TOTAL RACIST!” he tweeted in all caps to his millions of followers early Tuesday, the day of the New Hampshire presidential primary.
The tweet leaked audio from 2015 in which Michael Bloomberg, former New York mayor and current Democratic rival for Trump’s job, strongly defended the city’s stopand-frisk policing policy.
Before it was quickly taken down, the clip was originally posted by a liberal blogger on Monday night, aimed at reviving outrage over the aggressive policing tactics for which Bloomberg later apologized — as he was launching his presidential bid last fall.
In the clip he can be heard saying that “the way you get the guns out of the kids’ hands is to throw them up against the walls and frisk them.”
The former Republican also sounded defiant as he explained why the policy targeted minority kids in minority neighborhoods: “Because that’s where all the crime is.”
Bloomberg continued to defend stop-and-frisk after he left office in 2013.
Bloomberg? A racist?
Look who’s talking.
Trump has reason to feel unsettled by Bloomberg’s rise. While Trump’s bid to find dirt on previous front-runner Joe Biden led to impeachment, he now faces a potentially bigger threat to his presidency in Bloomberg.
He’s much wealthier than Trump. Trump knows media as a reality TV star, but Bloomberg founded one of the biggest media companies on the planet, which bears his name. Trump, a child of wealth, presents himself as selfmade. Bloomberg really did pull himself up by his own bootstraps.
And both of these sons of Queens, NYC, have a generous supply of chutzpah that makes their Twitter battle sound like a WWE match.
“Mini Mike Bloomberg is a LOSER who has money but can’t debate and has zero presence, you will see,” Trump tweeted Thursday.
Layering his insults on thick, Trump called Bloomberg a 5-foot-4 “mass of dead energy who does not want to be on the debate stage with these professional politicians.” (Bloomberg is reportedly 5-foot-7, according to his medical records.)
Bloomberg, no slouch at Big Apple audacity, tweeted back: “We know many of the same people in NY. Behind your back they laugh at you & call you a carnival barking clown. They know you inherited a fortune & squandered it with stupid deals and incompetence.”
Smack! Twitter fans picked up the theme. “#carnivalbarkingclown” was soon trending.
Students of Trump’s style understand how these shenanigans have a purpose. A lot of voters come to the voting booth for the fight as much as for views on issues. They want to know, will this candidate fight for me? Trump wins many votes by standing ready and eager to fight for them. Bloomberg sounds ready and eager to fight Trump for them.
It is the mere prospect of a better president that boosted Bloomberg to third place in a new national Quinnipiac University poll a day before the New Hampshire primary.
With hedge fund manager Tom Steyer also in the Democratic race, Campaign 2020 is turning into a battle of the billionaires that reminds me of an old African proverb: When elephants fight, the grass suffers. The grass is us, the voters, unless we hold all candidates to account on real issues, along with our current billionaire president.