Trump Says Bloomberg Had 'Bad Political Instinct,' Was 'Surrounded by Losers'

In an interview with Sean Hannity on his primetime Fox News show, President Donald Trump said one of the reasons that former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's presidential campaign failed because Bloomberg had "bad political instincts" and that he was "surrounded by losers."

Trump also blamed Bloomberg's debate performances, saying Bloomberg got "beat up very badly" by Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren.

After an underwhelming performance in the Super Tuesday primaries, where Bloomberg only picked up the six delegates from American Samoa after spending millions of his own money on advertising, Bloomberg suspended his presidential campaign Wednesday and gave his endorsement to former Vice President Joe Biden.

Bloomberg announced his exit from the race in a Wednesday statement saying "the delegate math has become virtually impossible—and a viable path to the nomination no longer exists."

"And so while I will not be the nominee," Bloomberg added, "I will not walk away from the most important political fight of my life. I've always believed that defeating Donald Trump starts with uniting behind the candidate with the best shot to do it. After yesterday's vote, it is clear that candidate is my friend and a great American, Joe Biden."

Trump said he knew Bloomberg's campaign was over as soon as he started to debate, but that other factors played into Bloomberg's exit from the Democratic race.

"[Bloomberg is] a smart guy in a certain way, in a different kind of way, but not in a political way," Trump said. "He's got a very bad political instinct. He's surrounded by people that I know, in some cases I know pretty well. They're losers. He's really surrounded by losers."

"But they become winners because they ripped [Bloomberg] off for a lot of money," Trump continued. "They really took him to the cleaners. But some of these guys are really third-rate people. And they wanted him to keep going and, you know, the longer he goes, the more money they make. That's why they did it, because they knew that it's not for him."

It was Bloomberg's highly publicized clashes with Warren that sealed his fate as a presidential candidate, Trump said.

"He was on that debate when a very mean, she is a very mean person, you can ask Bernie Sanders, because what she's done to him is terrible," Trump said. "When Elizabeth Warren went after him he was saying, 'Get me off this stage, get me off here fast.' He got beat up very badly by Elizabeth Warren. It was not a pretty sight to watch. And that was the end of him."

"I mean, it was incredible," Trump added. "It was so bad, it was the end of him. It ended right there and he was unable to recover from the debate performance, especially the first one."

Newsweek reached out to Bloomberg for comment but did not receive a response in time for publication.

Warren took immediate aim at Bloomberg during February's ninth Democratic Debate in Nevada, pressing Bloomberg on his usage of non-disclosure agreements to silence claims of sexual harassment and gender discrimination within his company.

"None of them accused me of anything other than maybe they didn't like a joke I told," Bloomberg said. Later, Bloomberg said he would not release those women from their NDAs.

"They signed the agreements," Bloomberg said, "and that's what we're going to live with."

Warren, a former teacher of contract law, appeared on a February CNN Town Hall with a blanket release form she herself had drawn up and offered to send it to Bloomberg.

"All that Mayor Bloomberg has to do is download it," Warren said. "I'll text it. Sign it and then the women or men will be free to speak and tell their own stories."

Bloomberg capitulated soon afterward, saying he would work with three women to free them from their NDAs and that his company would no longer use the binding agreements.

"I've done a lot of reflecting on this issue over the past few days and I've decided that for as long as I'm running the company, we won't offer confidentiality agreements to resolve claims of sexual harassment or misconduct going forward," Bloomberg wrote in a February statement.