Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is spending $100 million on digital ads against President Donald Trump despite not yet officially declaring his candidacy for the Democratic nomination to the presidency.
“We’re very clear,” Howard Wolfson, a top Bloomberg political adviser, told the New York Times on Friday. “A case that we make for Mike is that he is the best candidate to take on Trump, and one of the reasons he is the best candidate is he can take the fight to him immediately and robustly.”
The advertisements are slated to begin airing on Friday in the battleground states of Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin and will continue running through the end of the presidential primary season. Bloomberg himself is not featured in the ad beyond the legally mandated disclaimers, but rather the ads will focus on attacking the incumbent president.
The high-priced ticket item is especially unique considering that it would potentially be in addition to any ads Bloomberg might purchase to promote his own candidacy. CNBC reported that Bloomberg, who has an estimated net worth of more than $50 billion, has been prepared to spend more than the $100 million that he spent while he was running for mayor of New York City.
“We will have other ads that feature Mike Bloomberg,” Wolfson said. “You will be seeing a lot of Mike Bloomberg.”
The billionaire businessman, who filed as a Democratic presidential candidate in Alabama earlier in November because of the state’s early filing deadline, has not yet made an official declaration of a presidential run. In addition to Bloomberg entering the presidential race with a well-funded campaign, he would also have a significant amount of name recognition.
Bloomberg has been especially critical of the current 2020 Democratic primary field for the candidates’ dishonesty with the American people and their unwillingness to work across the aisle with their political adversaries.
“You know, I have my reservations about the people running and the way they are campaigning, and the promises they are making that they can’t fulfill, and their unwillingness to really admit what is possible and what is not, and their inconsistency from day to day and location after location,” Bloomberg said during an interview with CBS News in October. “This is not the way to run a railroad.”
“This country is in real trouble. We need somebody to pull people together,” he continued. “And when they say ‘I’m not going to talk to somebody from across the aisle’ — this is our country. What do you mean you’re not going to talk to somebody from across the aisle? We’ve got to work together. And I don’t see that.”
Wolfson also told The New York Times that the list of states included in Bloomberg’s campaign against Trump would continue to expand over time.
“If you believe, as Mike Bloomberg does, that Donald Trump represents an existential threat to our country, it is an all-hands-on-deck moment,” Wolfson continued to the New York Times. “The thinking is that the general election has started.”