Billionaire Leon Cooperman has been feuding with Elizabeth Warren over the senator’s proposed wealth tax should she win the 2020 election, and now he’s throwing his support behind former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who is reportedly close to entering the race.
“I’m a huge fan of Michael. I know him personally. It’s a breath of fresh air,” Cooperman told CNBC on Friday. “Unless he changes his stripes, he will have my unequivocal support.”
Bloomberg has been speaking to prominent fellow Democrats about the large 2020 field, and he’s concerned with former Vice President Joe Biden, the front-runner, and his campaign prospects allegedly sagging (though, he still leads in nearly all major polls). He also thinks Elizabeth Warren, who has surged near the top of the field, is too far left to defeat incumbent President Donald Trump, who Bloomberg’s campaign says “represents an unprecedented threat to our nation,” and therefore must be defeated.
Cooperman, who is worth $3.2 billion, is reportedly one of several Wall Street bigwigs ready to throw their money behind Bloomberg, who is worth a cool $52 billion. Bloomberg has signaled he’s willing to spend upward of $100 million on a presidential campaign.
Cooperman recently sent a letter to Warren where he cited Bloomberg’s story of becoming a self-made billionaire as a reason for the Senator to lay off demonizing the rich.
“In 1981, Mike Bloomberg, whose record of public service and philanthropy are legendary, created a machine that changed the way the financial world —a sector that is the source of much of the tax revenues that fuel your legislative priorities — conducts business,” Cooperman wrote in his open letter.
Meanwhile, Trump weighed in, insulting Bloomberg, who is 7 inches shorter than Trump, as “Little Michael,” as the president so often does with people who are shorter than him. Trump also famously didn’t reappoint Fed Chair Janet Yellen, who is 5-foot-3, because he thinks she’s too short to run a central bank.
“He’s not going to do well but I think he’s going to hurt Biden actually,” Trump said of Bloomberg’s possible campaign. “There’s nobody I’d rather run against than Little Michael.”
