Democratic presidential hopeful and billionaire Michael Bloomberg said he would vote to convict President Trump if he were in the U.S. Senate but that it would be better to let the voters decide whether Mr. Trump should remain in office.
“We’d be much better off letting the voters decide who is president in this country,” Mr. Bloomberg, the former New York City mayor, said when asked how he would advise senators involved in the trial.
“I was asked if I were [a] senator, how would I vote,” Mr. Bloomberg said in an exclusive interview that aired Monday on NBC’s “Today” program. “I’d have to swallow two or three times, but I would say I would vote to impeach, vote to convict, because there’s just so much evidence that he acted inappropriately.”
The main action in the Senate impeachment trial is set to kick off this week. Mr. Trump faces charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress stemming from an alleged campaign to withhold military assistance to Ukraine if the country did not announce politically beneficial investigations, including into former Vice President Joseph R. Biden, his son Hunter and the 2016 U.S. election.
Mr. Bloomberg has been saturating the airwaves with ads and is essentially conceding the first four Democratic nominating contests in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina, hoping for a strong performance on Super Tuesday in early March to propel his campaign forward.
He said he knows Mr. Trump “better than anybody else.”
“I would be more acceptable, I think, to the middle-of-the-road Republicans who don’t like him but do want somebody fiscally responsible,” he said. “So it’s that — it’s knowing how to deal with him. It’s being tough enough to deal with him at a practical level.”
• David Sherfinski can be reached at dsherfinski@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.