The former New York City mayor delivered his most scathing remarks about Trump since he called then-candidate Donald Trump a “dangerous demagogue” and knocked his business credentials in a speech at the 2016 Democratic National Convention.
“I said then that he was just not suited,” Bloomberg said Friday morning in a speech at the Democratic Business Council of Northern Virginia event. “He did not have the skills, the temperament, the work ethic to be president of the United States.”
Though both are New York billionaires, Bloomberg said he knew Trump in their former lives only “casually" through interactions at ceremonial events. He assailed the former real estate mogul for what he called “a complete failure of presidential leadership" and "totally incompetent management" as some federal agencies remain shuttered amid the longest government shutdown in U.S. history.
The government has been partially shut down for more than a month as Trump and Democrats spar over billions of dollars for his border wall.
“The whole episode really is a cynical, political stunt, and, unfortunately, we’re the ones paying the price,” Bloomberg said. “You’ve gotten exactly what I described: This is a person who should not be the president of the United States, and I think we have to get serious. He is way in over his head.”
Bloomberg dismissed America’s executive-in-chief as a “real estate promoter who’s never run a large organization before” and “lost big on a bunch of bets” after inheriting his fortune from his father.
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“We’ve gotta do something to make sure we get somebody different in the White House two years from now, and I’m committed to do that,” he said. “This is about competence — or the lack of it. The presidency is not an entry-level job, and the longer we have a pretend CEO who is recklessly running this country, the worse it’s gonna be for our economy and for our security. This is really dangerous.”
He likened Trump and his administration to a horror movie: “But instead of Freddy Krueger in the ‘Nightmare on Elm Street,’ we’ve got Donald Trump and the nightmare on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.”
