New video has surfaced of Mike Bloomberg explaining the time he told Donald Trump he loves him as the former New York City mayor continues to face scrutiny for his past friendship with the president.
Bloomberg was engaging in a conversation with a crowd at the University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School as part of the Distinguished Speaker Series in December 2016 – almost a month to the day after Trump was elected.
He noted his previous close relationship to the then-president-elect and even mentioned that he once told Trump, ‘Yes, Donald, I do love you.’
The billionaire explained that the interaction happened after Trump made remarks at a September 11 memorial service.
A video from 2016 surfaced where Mike Bloomberg explained a time when he told Donald Trump, ‘Yes, Donald, I do love you’
Bloomberg was speaking at the University of Oxford’s Business School in 2016, a month after Trump was elected president, and touched a few times on his relationship with Trump
The video comes as Bloomberg continues to face scrutiny for his previous closeness with the president, both native New Yorkers and both billionaires
‘I saw your speech in Philadelphia,’ Trump told Bloomberg at the time, which appeared to be a reference to the mayor’s speech at the Democratic National Convention that took aim at his fellow billionaire.
‘But you really do love me, don’t ya?’ Trump asked, according to Bloomberg’s iteration of the interaction. ‘And I said, ‘Yes, Donald, I do love you, I just disagree with everything you’ve ever said.”
‘And we had a good laugh,’ Bloomberg continued in the light-hearted retelling.
‘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 conceded. ‘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.’
Bloomberg has faced widespread criticism for his past interactions with Trump – a fellow New Yorker – especially has he has risen in the polls and qualified for the debate stage Wednesday for the first time since entering the presidential race in November.
Democratic candidates have used Bloomberg’s entry to unite against a common enemy, and several have attacked him for trying to buy the presidency and have even likened him to Trump.
This week, a photo of Bloomberg and Trump looking friendly playing golf together circulated social media after Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders posted it on Twitter Tuesday.
The photo included no caption and came as a response to an attack campaign email from Bloomberg, which said Sanders and Trump were ‘bros.’
Bloomberg also once said, ‘I’m a friend of Donald Trump’s. He is a New York icon,’ and that clip is making the rounds in the news.
The billionaire has attempted to distance himself from trump as much as possible since entering the race, and has upped his criticism of the president.
In a campaign email on President’s Day Monday, Bloomberg lauded ‘HAPPY PRESIDENTS DAY, DONALD TRUMP!’
‘The Mike Bloomberg 2020 campaign today celebrated our 45th President by releasing our 10 favorite ads that tell the truth about his presidency,’ the email read, then went into ten different attacks against Trump.
Bernie Sanders, in particular, is critical of Bloomberg and a photo circulated social media after the Vermont Senator shared an image of Bloomberg and Trump getting chummy on the golf course
In another email the same day, Bloomberg’s campaign accused Sanders of employing the same attack strategies as Trump.
Bloomberg has been a main target of Sanders, who is hyper-critical of billionaires and fellow candidates who accept campaign contributions from big-money donors.
Out of all the candidates in the primary race, past and present, Bloomberg has spent millions more on advertisements to increase name recognition and achieve spreading his message on why he’s the best candidate to take on Trump in November.
Bloomberg vowed not to take any contributions at all, and instead the 78-year-old billionaire is self-funding his campaign – which has caused Democrats and Republicans to charge he is trying to buy his way to the White House.
The former mayor has a net worth of 64 billion.
Criticism has also flurried to the Democratic National Committee after it changed the rules for qualifying for debates with Wednesday’s debate in Las Vegas, Nevada.
It nixed the previous fundraising requirements to make the debate stage, and instead candidates need to either reach polling thresholds or earn delegates in previous state primary competitions.
On Tuesday, Bloomberg reached the polling threshold and became the sixth of eight remaining candidates to make the debate stage.
Fellow candidates were not happy.
‘It’s a shame Mike Bloomberg can buy his way into the debate,’ Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren accused in a tweet Tuesday.
‘But at least now primary voters curious about how each candidate will take on Donald Trump can get a live demonstration of how we each take on an egomaniac billionaire,’ she said, likening Bloomberg to Trump.
The Bloomberg campaign tried to downplay Bloomberg’s past praise of the president.
‘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,’ Stu Loeser, a senior adviser to the campaign and longtime spokesman for Bloomberg as mayor, said in a statement to Politico.
‘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,’ he continued.
Bloomberg said during his 2016 talk at Oxford that he didn’t run for president as an independent in 2016 because he didn’t want to divide the vote and ultimately be the reason Trump won the White House.
‘I would, for the rest of my life and afterwards, been the person who gave us Donald Trump. And the results turned out to be the same, but at least you can’t blame me. I was on the other side,’ Bloomberg said to applause.