Billionaire Democrat Mike Bloomberg ended his self-funded presidential campaign earlier this month after his stunning failure on Super Tuesday. Since he first entered the race, his virtually limitless fortune has been discussed at length in the media.
Apparently, at the end of his campaign, he had $18 million in funds left and has finally decided to do something with that haul.
He’s giving it to the Democratic National Committee.
The Associated Press reports that Bloomberg’s $18 million transfer to the Democratic Party is “largest single such transfer ever” and “amounts to more than the national party’s typical cash balance.”
“The transfer will help the DNC make up for some of the steep fundraising disadvantages when compared with its Republican counterpart, which routinely has raised tens of millions more than the Democratic organization throughout election cycles.”
Bloomberg’s campaign “will also transfer its offices in six pivotal states to the Democratic parties in those states, to help accelerate their hiring and organizing. Those states are Arizona, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.”
Meanwhile, people nationwide are struggling with the ramifications of the coronavirus pandemic. Schools are closed and people are being told not to come into work. But, nevertheless, DNC officials are thrilled at receiving this cash and real estate, and plan to use it “to expand the party’s 12-state battleground program, with a focus on hiring additional staffers to work in organizing and data operations.”
But the coronavirus pandemic wasn’t entirely lost on Bloomberg. In a memo to DNC Chairman Tom Perez announcing the transfer, Bloomberg’s campaign attacked Trump for his alleged “mismanagement” of the crisis, saying that it should damage him politically, but “we should also not assume that Trump’s incompetence will be enough to make him a one-term president.”
So, in translation, Bloomberg thinks that Trump’s handling of the coronavirus won’t result in his defeat in November, so rather than donate that money to various organizations that can help people struggling to make ends meet during this crisis, Bloomberg donated his money to the Democratic Party, to help them defeat Trump.
President Trump donated his 2019 fourth-quarter salary to fight the coronavirus.
Bloomberg was only able to donate such a large sum of money to the DNC because he was a presidential candidate. Campaign finance laws limit how much an individual can give to a political party, but, since Bloomberg self-funded his campaign, he technically used a loophole to donate that large sum to the DNC because presidential campaigns have no limits on what they can donate to political parties.
So, in the middle of this crisis, Bloomberg chose to exploit a loophole in campaign finance laws to give a ton of money to the Democratic Party rather than donate that money to help struggling Americans in the middle of this pandemic. How revealing.
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Matt Margolis is the author of Trumping Obama: How President Trump Saved Us From Barack Obama’s Legacy and the bestselling book The Worst President in History: The Legacy of Barack Obama. You can follow Matt on Twitter @MattMargolis
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