Seeing a Bloomberg Ad on Fox News, Trump Takes the Bait

Trump heeded the counsel for a while, according to several of his allies, even as he repeatedly expressed anxiety about Bloomberg’s spending. But as he has tuned into coverage of his Senate impeachment trial, Trump has been pricked by a deluge of television ads funded by the former New York City mayor — a far wealthier billionaire who has made clear in his public remarks that he doesn’t fear the president.

The ads have been everywhere, appearing when Trump catches up on television viewing in Washington and following him to Florida when he visits his new home state. But Thursday morning, when the spending migrated to Trump’s favorite morning show on Fox News, Bloomberg’s aides all but spoke to the president through the television screen.

The show, “Fox and Friends,” aired without commentary a new ad from Bloomberg’s team that is based on reporting from a new book, “A Very Stable Genius,” describing the language Trump used to excoriate military generals during a Pentagon meeting in 2017. The ad described him as “erratic” and pointed to the “chaos” in his administration.

Bloomberg’s campaign manager, Kevin Sheekey, appeared on the show to unveil the ad, saying the military is an “institution that everyone respects. I think people want our commander in chief to respect the institution, and I think he weakens the country by attacking it.”

The ad struck Trump, with its focus on a topic he has often been concerned about — maintaining support among members of the military. So the president, who is notorious for reacting to what he sees on Fox News, did just that.

“Mini Mike Bloomberg is playing poker with his foolhardy and unsuspecting Democrat rivals,” Trump tweeted. “He says that if he loses (he really means when!) in the primaries, he will spend money helping whoever the Democrat nominee is.”

He added: “By doing this, he figures, they won’t hit him as hard during his hopeless ‘presidential’ campaign. They will remain silent! The fact is, when Mini losses, he will be spending very little of his money on these ‘clowns’ because he will consider himself to be the biggest clown of them all - and he will be right!”

The president’s focus on Bloomberg is not commensurate with the former mayor’s standing in the polls so far. Bloomberg is still below double digits in nearly every survey after spending more than $256 million on ads in less than two months.

Bloomberg has benefited, however, from being mostly ignored by his primary rivals, some of whom don’t want to elevate him in the race but also don’t want to alienate him and his ability to support the Democratic nominee in the general election. And most Democratic strategists remain skeptical that a candidate who once supported aggressive policing policies, who has switched parties three times and who endorsed President George W. Bush in 2004 will be able to win the nomination.

(BEGIN OPTIONAL TRIM.)

From Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, to Brad Parscale, his campaign manager, to his polling team and other advisers, the president has been told repeatedly that Bloomberg isn’t worth his attention.

Meanwhile, even for some Democratic observers who are uncomfortable with how much money Bloomberg is flooding into the system, there is a relief in watching the candidate get into Trump’s head in a way that few have.

“Trump fears Bloomberg because Bloomberg is actually the guy who Trump played on TV — a fantastically wealthy, self-made success with unlimited resources and a willingness to spend it,” said David Axelrod, a former senior adviser to President Barack Obama.

(END OPTIONAL TRIM.)

The Trump campaign played down any worries about Bloomberg.

“It’s a free country and he can set his money on fire if he wants to,” said Tim Murtaugh, a campaign spokesman. “He’s still in a statistical tie with the back of the pack in the Democrat field.”

The Trump campaign is dismissive of the idea that Bloomberg could be an ongoing threat as anything other than the nominee, despite his pledge to spend to support the Democratic standard-bearer through Election Day. And officials have taken note that Bloomberg’s team is trying to mirror the Trump campaign’s playbook with online spending.

But Bloomberg’s advisers see a void that the candidate is filling, in a primary race during which the candidates have sometimes struggled with whether to depict Trump as an existential threat or to ignore him altogether. The president, meanwhile, continues to try to set the terms of engagement in the election, threatening to attack them in demeaning, and deeply personal, ways.

Howard Wolfson, an adviser to Bloomberg, said that Trump had been “essentially running unopposed until Mike entered the race.”

“While the other Democrats are fighting and sniping with one another in Iowa, we are running a nationwide campaign that is taking the fight directly to President Trump on issues where he is extremely vulnerable,” he said.

As for Trump’s nickname for Bloomberg — “Mini” — Wolfson called it “irrelevant” and said, “If you want to think about small, Trump could fit in Mike’s pocket. The stature gap, the wealth gap, the success gap, the experience gap, the achievement gap between these two men is vast.”

(STORY CAN END HERE. OPTIONAL MATERIAL FOLLOWS.)

The Bloomberg campaign has been ratcheting up its attacks as Trump has reacted to the spending.

Guided by extensive internal polling, Bloomberg’s campaign first began directly attacking Trump with an ad on health care, accusing the president of ruining insurance for millions of Americans and undermining coverage of preexisting conditions. The ad about preexisting conditions immediately drew a Twitter rebuke from the president.

From health care to the environment to impeachment, the Bloomberg campaign has been running ads attacking Trump’s record nationally, particularly in key swing states. The ad about preexisting conditions, for example, was backed by more than $1.2 million in the Orlando, Florida, market alone.

But, in a further tweak to Trump, the campaign is also running ads in his strongholds, such as $14 million worth of ads attacking the president in Texas. The state is also a Super Tuesday state, where Bloomberg hopes to amass delegates.

And the Bloomberg campaign confirmed that the ad about the Pentagon that set off Trump on Thursday morning would continue airing on Fox News.

Every television ad attacking Trump concludes with a contrast to Bloomberg, whose mayoral record and subsequent activism are portrayed glowingly; none of the ads are simply a takedown of the president.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times .