President Donald Trump has been happy to sit back and watch the Democratic primary field tear each other apart, but his re-election campaign is growing concerned about billionaire Michael Bloomberg's growing support.
The president has been lobbing attacks at the former New York City mayor on Twitter and in Fox News interviews, but his allies insist he's not afraid of Bloomberg — he just watches a whole lot of television, reported Politico.
"He's very reactive to what he sees and the fact that Bloomberg's ads are all over better explains the attacks on him than Trump being fearful of him," said a Republican operative.
That GOP operative said Trump's 2020 campaign sees Bloomberg as more of a threat to other Democrats than to the president himself.
"[Bloomberg] is the definition of the rich technocrat that the Bernie wing [of the Democratic party] can't stand," the operative said.
But some critics say Trump has been fixated on Bloomberg since the start of the year, and frequently brings up the former mayor's campaign operation — which now boasts more than 1,000 staffers, including many top Democratic campaign veterans.
Trump's 2020 campaign is "concerned" about Bloomberg's spending, because they saw how much he helped Democrats in the 2018 midterm cycle, but they're hoping to turn that strength into a weakness.
"The countervailing view is that at some point his money becomes counterproductive," said a person close to the 2018 campaign. "When you close in on spending $500 million by the end of February, it starts to look like you're buying the presidency, and I think that's a problem for Democrats who are out there criticizing the millionaires and billionaires controlling everything."
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