Trump, Bloomberg trade insults as Twitter feud escalates
President Trump and Mike Bloomberg escalated their war of words on Thursday, trading vicious insults on Twitter that included personal put-downs and mocking memes.
Among the invective was Trump calling Bloomberg a “loser” and a pint-sized “mass of dead energy,” while Bloomberg called Trump a “carnival barking clown” whose friends secretly laugh at him.
The commander in chief launched the first volley by comparing Bloomberg — whose lavish ad spending has boosted his poll numbers among the eight remaining Democratic presidential candidates — to former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who was the early front-runner in the 2016 Republican primary before being bested by Trump.
“Mini Mike Bloomberg is a LOSER who has money but can’t debate and has zero presence, you will see. He reminds me of a tiny version of Jeb ‘Low Energy’ Bush, but Jeb has more political skill and has treated the Black community much better than Mini!” Trump tweeted late Thursday morning.
The latter reference alluded to Tuesday’s release of audio from a 2015 speech in which Bloomberg defended the NYPD’s controversial stop-and-frisk program and said cops could use a “Xerox” description of minority males to identify murder suspects.
The president also retweeted a message from his White House director of social media, Dan Scavino, who posted a doctored photo of a 2017 ceremony in which Trump cut a ribbon to symbolize the red tape being eliminated via his deregulation agenda.
The new version included an image of a child-sized Bloomberg, wearing a ridiculously long jacket and tie, dwarfed by a stack of papers.
Scavino’s tweet also included a link to a CNBC report about the former mayor and billionaire media mogul paying social-media “influencers” to post satirical memes about him on Instagram.
Trump followed up the attack 10 minutes later by further mocking Bloomberg’s height, which has been reported as between 5-foot-6 and just short of 5-foot-8.
“Mini Mike is a 5’4” mass of dead energy who does not want to be on the debate stage with these professional politicians. No boxes please,” Trump wrote, repeating a disputed claim that Bloomberg “wants a box for the debates to stand on.”
Trump also invoked Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders, a self-avowed socialist who on Tuesday accused Bloomberg of “thinking he can buy the election.”
Bloomberg “hates Crazy Bernie and will, with enough money, possibly stop him,” Trump said.
“Bernie’s people will go nuts!”
Bloomberg fired back about 20 minutes later, taking aim at Trump’s reputation as a self-made billionaire real-estate developer.
“@realDonaldTrump — we know many of the same people in NY. Behind your back they laugh at you & call you a carnival barking clown. They know you inherited a fortune & squandered it with stupid deals and incompetence,” Bloomberg tweeted.
“I have the record & the resources to defeat you. And I will.”
Bloomberg also took a second shot by posting a video meme of Russell Crowe in his Oscar-winning role as Maximus in the 2000 film “Gladiator.”
“THE TIME FOR HONORING YOURSELF WILL SOON BE AT AN END,” the meme says.
Bloomberg mentioned the exchange during a campaign stop in North Carolina Thursday, contending the president’s tweets were a sign of fear.
“If he doesn’t mention you, you got a big problem,” Bloomberg said. “But the president attacked me again this morning on Twitter. Thank you very much, Donald. He sees our poll numbers, and I think it’s fair to say he is scared because he knows I have the record and the resources to defeat him, and with you, with you together, we can get it done.”
Bloomberg, whose wealth Forbes estimates at $61.8 billion, making him the eighth-richest person in the US, is pouring his money into an ad blitz to promote his presidential run and badger Trump.
Since throwing his hat in the ring in November, Bloomberg, who is self-financing his campaign, has poured about $350 million into television, online and radio spots, including about $1 million a day on Facebook.
The media mogul has said he would be willing to spend $1 billion on the race.
Trump, whom Forbes estimates to be worth $3.1 billion, and associated committees raised $154 million in the last three months of 2019 and have $195 million on hand, according to an analysis by The New York Times.