Bloomberg vs. Trump: How similar are the New York billionaires?
The candidates have more in common than being New York billionaires
Mike Bloomberg, on the eve of the Super Tuesday primaries that he’s hinged his presidential campaign on, admitted that he agrees with President Trump’s strategy to pressure China on trade and open communications with North Korea.
“A lot of criticisms of Donald Trump are not his policies, it’s the way he’s doing it," Bloomberg said during a Fox News town hall in Virginia on Monday night.
It’s not the first time that Bloomberg, the three-time New York City mayor, has elicited comparisons between himself and Trump, a fellow New Yorker and billionaire.
Both men have switched political parties multiple times: For almost the past two decades, Bloomberg was a Republican until he joined the Democratic Party in 2018. Trump, in 2001, changed his party affiliation to Democratic, which lasted until 2009, when he flipped it to the Republican Party. After briefly registering as an independent in 2011, he returned to the Republican Party in 2012.
Bloomberg and Trump also have an affinity for naming businesses after themselves. In 1981, Bloomberg co-founded the financial information and media company Bloomberg LP. He now owns about 88 percent of the business, according to Forbes, and it is worth a reported $10 billion.
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Similarly, Trump led the Trump organization, a group of about 500 business entities of which he was the sole or principal owner. At least 264 of those organizations include the name “Trump,” according to his financial disclosure.
The candidates have also backed tough-on-crime policies. Bloomberg has come under fire for supporting "stop and frisk," the controversial policing strategy that disproportionately targets men of color, while he served as New York City mayor. Bloomberg has since apologized for implementing the policy, though he recently came under fire for resurfaced audio in which he acknowledged that it targeted minority "kids" whom cops must throw "up against the wall" to disarm.
“Ninety-five percent of murders -- murderers and murder victims -- fit one M.O.,” he said. “You can just take a description, Xerox it, and pass it out to all the cops. They are male, minorities, 16 to 25. That’s true in New York, that’s true in virtually every city … And that’s where the real crime is.”
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Trump has also praised “stop and frisk” during his presidency; in 2018, while delivering a speech at the International Association of Chiefs of Police Annual Convention in Florida, he claimed that “‘stop and frisk’ works and it was meant for problems like Chicago.”
The two also are quick to engage in Twitter feuds and frequently battle with each other online.
“Mini Mike, don’t lick your dirty fingers,” Trump wrote on Tuesday evening in response to a video of Bloomberg eating pizza. “Both unsanitary and a dangerous to others and yourself!” he added, likely a reference to the widespread outbreak of coronavirus.
Earlier in the day, he belittled Bloomberg as an “incompetent” debater and said he was “very bad under pressure - a choker!”
Bloomberg quickly responded: “Donald, I was surprised when you put Pence in charge of the coronavirus response. Seems like an awfully obvious admission that you aren’t up to the job yourself. Is it true that he’s basically running things now?”
Of course, as candidates, the two are running on fairly different platforms. Bloomberg has vowed to expand the Affordable Care Act; the Trump administration is battling to kill it. Bloomberg has said he wants to impose new taxes on wealthy Americans and Wall Street, while the Trump administration was criticized for slashing the corporate tax rate in its 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.
Bloomberg has painted himself as the only candidate who has the power to defeat Trump in the November general election, should he headline his party’s ticket.
“We are really down to a race where there are three people left who could really be considered viable to be sworn into office next year, and that’s Bernie Sanders, Mike Bloomberg and Donald Trump,” Bloomberg’s states director Dan Kanninen recently told reporters. “And of that bunch, only Mike Bloomberg has a chance to beat Donald Trump in the fall election.”
Because he did not enter the campaign until November, Bloomberg did not compete in the four early-voting states and is so far untested nationally.