Jeff Greene on Trump: ‘I can’t stand the guy’
Jeff Greene, the billionaire Democrat running for Florida governor, was unsparing Tuesday in his criticism of another billionaire who went into politics, President Donald Trump.
“I can’t stand this guy. I mean I never liked the guy when I first met him,” Greene said.
Greene said he was drawing on his one-on-one encounters with Trump, after he moved to Palm Beach and joined Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club.
“I would be at my table, and he would come over all the time,” he said, explaining that Trump didn’t engage in normal conversation. He said Trump wouldn’t engage with his fellow billionaire, instead addressing a regular comment to Greene’s wife.
“He would always like point to me and say ‘your husband is really smart’ and then he’d walk away or say ‘beautiful wife,’ and I was thinking ‘This guy is weird.’” Greene said. “This is a guy who is unwilling to engage in any kind of conversation, he is so insecure.” Greene said many in Palm Beach who have started cozying up to Trump because he’s president thought the same thing. Trump, he said, was persona non grata in Palm Beach. “He was considered this tacky narcissistic nutcase that nobody liked,” Greene said.
He and one of the other four Democrats running for governor, former Miami Beach Mayor Philip Levine, have traded accusations, with each accusing the other of having said nice things about Trump. Each candidate has touted his anti-Trump credentials.
Greene offered his scathing assessment of Trump in response to several questions about the president at a gathering of Broward’s Democratic Professionals Network.
He said he thinks Trump “is much more dangerous than I think anybody realizes.”
It stems from a fundamental facet of Trump’s personality. “We’re never going to have anything honest from Donald Trump. He’s never been honest in his life,” Greene said. “His M.O. his entire life has been to lie, provoke and humiliate.”
Greene said he hasn’t yet been billed for this year’s dues, and now that he’s a big Trump critic doesn’t expect to be. If he is, he won’t pay and won’t renew.
A Levine ad shows Greene calling Trump a “great guy,” something Greene said is taken out of context.
He said he was critical of candidate Trump, called him a sexual predator when tape emerged of Trump saying he would freely grab women’s genitals, and declared the day before the election he’d be scared to death by a President Trump.