Mike Bloomberg’s campaign accused Bernie Sanders of acting like President Trump by engaging in attacks against the billionaire former three-term New York City mayor and misrepresenting his comments about farmers.
Bloomberg campaign manager Kevin Sheekey slammed the Sanders campaign for circulating a 2016 video of Bloomberg making remarks about farming that he claimed were “completely out of context.”
The heading on the statement said, “Bernie’s New Bro….Donald Trump.”
“It’s a shameful turn of events to see Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump deploy the very same attacks and tactics against Mike, but the reason is clear. At this point, the primary is Bernie’s to lose, and ours to win. Bernie knows this. Trump knows this. That’s why they are united in the campaign against Mike,” Sheekey said.
Sanders responded by snarkily tweeting out a photo of Bloomberg with Trump together on a golf course.
The back and forth began after Trump supporters started circulating a video in which Bloomberg suggested during a 2016 talk that farming and factory work require less “gray matter” than modern technology jobs. Sanders’ campaign also posted the video.
Sheekey claimed the video of the Bloomberg comments circulated by the Sanders’ campaign — also retweeted by Donald Trump Jr. — was “taken completely out of context.”
“The video cuts off Mike’s first sentence where he is referring to agrarian society that lasted 3,000 years, not farmers today. In just the past three months, Mike has traveled to 26 states. During that time, he has met with farmers and heard directly about the struggles they face. The Bernie Sanders campaign is choosing to push out falsehoods and sow divisions within the Democratic party,” he said.
Sheekey said the controversy surrounding the video was just the latest Sanders’ camp attack against Bloomberg.
He noted that in just the past week, Sanders’ national press secretary Briahna Joy Gray, senior advisor David Sirota and national campaign co-chair Nina Turner have referred to Bloomberg as a “racist” and an “oligarch,” and “implied Donald Trump is better than a fellow Democratic candidate for president, and called Bloomberg supporters ‘enablers.’ ”
The racism charge was a response to Bloomberg’s prior comments defending the NYPD’s stop and frisk policy when he was mayor — particularly in a 2015 Aspen Institute speech, an audio of which was leaked last week.
“Mike is in this race to defeat Donald Trump, and he’s the Democratic candidate who can get that done. This campaign will not sit idly by and allow these false attacks to stand without response,” Sheekey said.
Sanders could be playing with fire. Bloomberg, who has already spent $400 million in ads on his presidential campaign, has the resources to run commercials unloading on Sanders.