While Bloomberg’s political opponents attacked him on his past record during the debates, Trump called Bloomberg’s performance “grossly incompetent.”
“Mini Mike Bloomberg’s debate performance tonight was perhaps the worst in the history of debates,” Trump tweeted after the Las Vegas debate in February, “and there have been some really bad ones. He was stumbling, bumbling and grossly incompetent. If this doesn’t knock him out of the race, nothing will. Not so easy to do what I did!”
Bloomberg implied during his Houston speech that his actions spoke louder than his words.
“I am not a typical politician,” Bloomberg said. “I think that I showed that a week or so ago in a debate. I believe we need a leader who’s ready to be commander in chief, not the college debater-in-chief.”
“If you want someone who talks turkey and who has a record of accomplishment on all the big issues facing our country, and if you want somebody who has the resources to beat Trump, that’s me,” Bloomberg added.
Bloomberg also mentioned the differences he sees between himself and the president, labeling himself as the “un-Trump.”
“I campaign and say I’m the ‘un-Trump.’ Just think about it. He breaks promises, I keep them. He divides people, I unite them. He’s a climate denier. I’m an engineer, I actually believe in science. Imagine that.”
Bloomberg also obliquely referred to two of his debate opponents having the “same answers” regardless of what was asked.
“I don’t talk until the cows come home and as, you’ve seen in the debates, I’m not someone who just yells slogans even when they’re not true,” Bloomberg said. “That’s what they did. Two of them, that last debate, they had the same answers no matter what the question was.”
Newsweek reached out to Bloomberg’s campaign but did not receive a response in time for publication.
Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren has repeatedly brought up Bloomberg’s usage of non-disclosure agreements which prevent employees in his company from speaking about alleged sexual harassment and discriminatory behavior by Bloomberg.
While Bloomberg has said his company would work with three women to release them from their NDAs, Warren said on Friday that his efforts were “just not enough.”
“Michael Bloomberg needs to do a blanket release so that all women who have been muzzled by nondisclosure agreements can step up and tell their side of the story in terms of what Michael Bloomberg has done,” Warren told reporters.
Bloomberg said in a February statement that his company will no longer use NDAs.
“I’ve done a lot of reflecting on this issue over the past few days and I’ve decided that for as long as I’m running the company, we won’t offer confidentiality agreements to resolve claims of sexual harassment or misconduct going forward,” Bloomberg said.
