PHILADELPHIA (AP) – Michael Bloomberg, elected mayor of New York City as a Republican, will offer a forceful denunciation of fellow New York billionaire Donald Trump on Wednesday at the Democratic convention.
Now a political independent, Bloomberg considered making a third-party run for president this year before opting against a campaign, expressing worry he would siphon away votes from Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and inadvertently help elect Trump.
Members of the former mayor’s staff said Bloomberg, one of the nation’s richest individuals, will lay out in his convention address why a Trump administration would be disastrous for the nation’s economy.
A three-term mayor who left office in 2013, Bloomberg has been sharply critical of Trump. He wrote in March that the real estate mogul has run “the most divisive and demagogic presidential campaign I can remember, preying on people’s prejudices and fears.”
While in office, Bloomberg had a cordial relationship with Clinton, who, as a senator from New York, was involved in the city’s post-9/11 rebuilding effort. He did, too, with Trump, who he knew from New York’s glitzy social circuit and from dealings with him as a developer.