Ariel Zilber
Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg hit out at the Democratic Party for concealing President Joe Biden’s condition all the way up through the middle of this year before tapping Vice President Kamala Harris as a replacement White House candidate just months before Tuesday’s election.
Bloomberg wrote an op-ed in his eponymous media outlet on Thursday analyzing a second Trump presidency following Donald Trump’s resounding victory over Harris on Tuesday.
The former mayor suggested that Democrats “might ask themselves how exactly they lost to Trump,” who he called “an ailing 78-year-old who much of the country despises.”
“It probably wasn’t great to cover up President Joe Biden’s infirmities until they became undeniable on live TV,” Bloomberg wrote in the op-ed.
He added that it wasn’t “ideal” for “party elders” to replace him with Harris, “a nominee who had received no electoral votes and had failed decisively in a previous presidential run.”
Biden, 81, ended his reelection campaign in July, weeks after an abysmal debate performance sent his party into a spiral and raised questions about whether he still had the mental acuity and stamina to serve as a credible nominee.
But polling long beforehand showed that many Americans worried about his age.
Some 77% of Americans said in August 2023 that Biden was too old to be effective for four more years, according to a poll by the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs.
The president bowed out on July 21 after getting not-so-subtle nudges from Democratic Party powers, including former President Barack Obama and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California.
Biden endorsed Harris and handed over his campaign operation to her.
Last month, The New York Times reported that Bloomberg donated $50 million to a nonprofit that was supporting Harris’ presidential bid.
The former mayor who unsuccessfully ran for the Democratic Party nomination in 2020 was reluctant to make the donation, which was far less than what he spent in the previous election cycles during the Trump presidency.
In private conversations, Bloomberg, the 82-year-old mogul who has a net worth that Forbes estimates at $105 billion, told associates that he was not impressed with Harris.
Democrats were alarmed that Bloomberg insisted on secrecy when making the $50 million donation to Harris, according to the Times.
Before the donation, Bloomberg had given just $47 million to help Democrats in congressional races — which is less than half the $95 million sum he donated in 2018 to help the party win the mid-term elections.
Bloomberg gave more than $250 million combined in 2018 and 2020 in an attempt to thwart Trump, the Times reported.
That excludes the $1.1 billion that he spent on his presidential campaign, which fell flat in the Democratic primaries in 2020. Nonetheless, he pledged to spend big to help defeat Trump.
On the 2020 election cycle, Bloomberg spent $100 million to boost the Biden campaign in Florida. Trump ended up winning Florida handily.
This time around, Bloomberg was reluctant to donate after Biden stepped aside. It was only after Harris aides met with him at his headquarters and sought his advice on her economic and housing plan that he decided to make a donation, the Times reported.
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This post was originally posted by New York Post
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