Newt Gingrich: Bloomberg's Money Could Make Him 'Formidable'

Newt: Bloomberg's Money Could Make Him 'Formidable'

Michael Bloomberg (Evan Agostini/AP)

By Sandy Fitzgerald | Monday, 25 November 2019 11:33 AM EST

Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who officially announced his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination over the weekend, has a "pretty thin" shot at taking down President Donald Trump, but his money alone could make him a "very formidable" candidate, ex-House Speaker Newt Gingrich said Monday.

"Look, it's a free country," Gingrich told Fox Business' "Mornings with Maria." "But if he spent as much per vote as he spent running for mayor of New York, somewhere around $6 billion or $7 billion, he'd be very formidable. He can clearly outspend Trump. He's much richer than Trump."

The former mayor and media billionaire, Gingrich added, "could hire every teenager in Iowa and have them work the precincts the last weekend and suddenly be formidable. We've never seen anything quite like Bloomberg."

Gingrich also commented on a Politico article that revealed Democrats and liberal causes were boosted in 2018 through an unprecedented amount of secret money, including from a little-known Washington, D.C., nonprofit, the Sixteen Thirty Fund, which spent $14 million on more than 100 left-leaning causes during the midterms. Bloomberg also donated millions during the midterms.

"I always thought we would be better off to have a clean election scene, where people give money in public," said Gingrich. "You have huge machines that are unaccountable that can do all sorts of things."

Gingrich also said he doesn't believe Bloomberg's strategy of going after Trump will work out, especially if the economy keeps growing, even at a modest rate.

"(If the) average person looks up when all the noise is over, they've got a better job, everybody in their family has a better job," said Gingrich. "If you're middle class or if you're the working poor, your income went up this last year at a record rate. You look around and you think, 'tell me why I should want to risk screwing up the entire economy with these weird left-wing ideas and why should I think that's a good idea?'"