Michael Bloomberg may have a hard time against both other Democrats and President Trump if he ultimately decides to jump into the 2020 race, says political commentator and Newsmax and Cagle Syndicate columnist Michael Shannon.
“Bloomberg has a surplus of money, but he’s running a deficit of personality,” the journalist and author explained in an interview.
“If you held an audition for boring people, I don't think that you could find one more boring than Michael Bloomberg. Now, everyone talks about how moderate he is. But if Bloomberg is the nominee and frankly, I don't think he can do it -but if he is the nominee, he's wrong on abortion. He would be happy to confiscate your guns just like Beto [O’Rourke] wanted to. And he's the guy that was for banning straws and sodas,” Shannon added.
According to the commentator, if Trump wants to take down his former friend, all he has to do is come up with an appropriate label. “Trump, if he’s smart, will label him as Nanny Bloomberg, because that's what he is. He wants to control the little things you do. And he is completely out of touch with the average voter. A guy who is concerned about global warming and he flies on the weekend to his home in Bermuda. His carbon footprint is about the size of El Salvador's,” Shannon suggested.
Reports that Michael Bloomberg, the 77-year-old veteran investor, may enter the race began swirling on Thursday, after “people briefed on Mr. Bloomberg’s plans” told the New York Times that he was preparing the legal groundwork to join the already crowded race for the Democratic nomination.
Howard Wolfson, one of Bloomberg’s closest advisors, told the Times that the former mayor has been “increasingly concerned that the current field of candidates is not well positioned” to ensure Trump’s defeat in 2020. “If Mike runs he would offer a new choice to Democrats built on a unique record,” Wolfson said, pointing to Bloomberg’s record as mayor, as a businessman and philanthropist.
Bloomberg received a verbal thrashing from Trump on Friday, with the president calling him “Little Michael” and saying he “doesn’t have the magic to do well.”
‘A Warning’ by Anonymous
But Trump has faced problems of his own, including the upcoming publication of ‘A Warning’, a new anti-Trump book claimed to have been written by a ‘senior Trump administration official’, which compares the president’s leadership style to “a twelve-year old in an air traffic control tower.”
Commenting on the new book, Shannon said that it wasn’t so important compared to the broader campaign that it’s part of.
“I don’t give it a lot of credibility…If you don't have the courage to come forward and even be a whistleblower, then I don't give you a lot of credibility,” he said.
“There is a former official who contends that Anonymous is actually Kirstjen Nielsen, the DHS secretary who was forced out. I don't believe that. But there are a number of people that it could be and I don't think this book is actually the anonymous source type of publication we've seen about Trump in the past in book form,” the columnist added.
Asked why Trump has faced what seems to be such an unprecedented smear campaign against him during his presidency, Shannon suggested that it was “because he wasn’t supposed to win.”
“He is not part of the ruling elite. The clique of a RINO Republican is Republican In Name Only – like Jeb Bush and Mario Rubio and all those people that Trump thumped in the 2016 primary. Trump talked about things that they didn't want to address. Immigration is what got him elected…And so that's why the left has undergone the largest attempt at voter suppression in the history of the United States. They are trying to overturn a presidential election,” he added.
Regarding books like ‘A Warning’, Shannon said that he didn’t believe that any single bad story about Trump hurt him or his chances in 2020. However, “what does harm him is the constant drip of negative stories by the opposition media that just through sheer volume damages and, regardless of whether it’s accurate or not, and the people who depend on their information from the major networks ABC, NBC, CBS and then the cable networks like MSNBC and CNN are getting a thoroughly biased picture of Trump and it harms [him] with them.”
Shannon also pointed to a 2017 Harvard report on Trump’s first 100 days in office which showed that coverage reached up to 90 negative amid major outlets. “And the network everyone accuses of being the ‘government approved network’ - Fox - only looks that way because their coverage was 52 percent positive, 48 percent negative, which to me says it's completely balanced. And so if you don't watch Fox to get the other side of the story or if you don't follow these other news outlets that play things down the middle or lean right, then you're only getting anonymous stuff every day for the last three and a half years,” Shannon added.
Ultimately, according to the columnist, Trump may actually have an uphill battle to win a second term, since presently his treatment by the media seems to amount to achieve “death by a thousand cuts.”
