Michael Bloomberg: ‘I’d have to swallow two or three times’ but would vote to convict Trump
Former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg would vote to convict President Donald Trump if he were a senator in the impeachment trial, he said in an interview that aired Monday.
“We’d be much better off letting the voters decide who is President in this country,” the Democratic presidential candidate said in an interview on NBC’s “Today Show.”
“I’d have to swallow two or three times, but I would say I would vote to convict because there’s so much evidence that he acted inappropriately.”
Bloomberg has previously said that the 2020 election is a “better forum” to remove President Donald Trump from office than a formal impeachment inquiry. In September, Bloomberg told CNN’s Kate Bolduan that he worried that the impeachment process would “turn into a partisan thing,” and “we don’t need any more partisanship.”
Trump was impeached by the House last month on charges of abuse of power and obstructing Congress over his scheme to pressure Ukraine for political favors. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi handed over the articles to the Senate on Thursday, kicking off a Senate impeachment trial that will culminate in a final vote that will force all 100 senators — including four presidential candidates — to make a decision on whether or not to remove Trump from office.
Bloomberg, a billionaire, has also placed millions of dollars worth of television ads across the country to jump start his late entry into the 2020 campaign. He has already spent $235 million of his own money on TV, radio and digital advertising — more than the rest of the Democratic field, excluding competitor and fellow billionaire Tom Steyer, have spent combined. Bloomberg is self funding his campaign.
“I don’t have this burning desire from the day I was born to be President of the United States. What I have is a desire to do something for the country … because I’ve got kids and I want to leave them a better world,” Bloomberg said in his interview with NBC.
