Bloomberg in 2016: Bernie Sanders 'Would've Beaten Donald Trump'

Former New York City mayor and presidential hopeful Michael Bloomberg claimed in 2016 that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) “would’ve beaten Donald Trump” in the 2016 presidential election had Hillary Clinton not received the nomination.

The resurfaced footage came from a discussion Bloomberg had at the University of Oxford, where he discussed an array of topics including socialism, Sanders, transgender rights, and Donald Trump.

Bloomberg told the audience:

The solution to our problems is more open borders, not closed borders. The solution to our problem is to improve education, not to try to penalize people because they are successful. If you don’t have successful people, you’re never going to have the wear-with-all to support, help those who are not. We tried socialism, it doesn’t work.

“That was a guy, Bernie Sanders, who would have beaten Donald Trump,” Bloomberg continued. “Polls show he would have walked away with it. But Hillary Clinton got the nomination for a variety of reasons.”

Bloomberg then launched into a stand against socialism with statements he claimed were not meant to “knock young people.”:

What did [Bernie Sanders] stand for? He stood for something, he called it Democratic socialism and the young people… listened to Bernie Sanders and they said ‘yeah, democratic…that’s good. Socialism…yeah that’s that social media stuff’ because our kids no longer learn civics in school, they no longer study western history, they no longer read western literature.

Bloomberg also sent a warning to those who “don’t know what happened in the past.”

“We are trying to change and dumb down the system and if you don’t know what happened in the past, you’re going to have to relive it,” he said. “It’s unfortunate but true and I think it’s very dangerous the world we’re going into.”

In the same interview, Bloomberg spoke of Donald Trump and said, “He is socially a nice person.”

“If you sat and had dinner with Donald Trump, you’d probably walk away saying, ‘Everything he said is bullshit, he can’t be doing that,’ but you have a good time. He is socially a nice person.”

Earlier this week, Bloomberg claimed Sanders’ ideas are “so far to the left it’s not practical.”

“I don’t agree with him on virtually anything,” Bloomberg said of Sanders in a Monday night interview. “But I have committed to support the Democratic candidate because I find Trump so unsuited for the job.”

Sanders has also taken shots at Bloomberg, claiming in December that the “dumbest person on Earth” could run for president if they had billions of dollars.