Donald Trump Tweets Insults at ‘Little’ Michael Bloomberg as Billionaire Feud Heats Up

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By Ari Feldman July 29, 2016

We no longer have to wonder about the identity of the “little guy” Donald Trump said he wanted to smack.

The Republican nominee fired off tweets Friday morning, leaving little doubt that he was referring to former New York City mayor and fellow billionaire, Michael Bloomberg, who denounced the Donald at the Democratic convention.

At a rally in Davenport, Iowa, on Thursday afternoon, Donald Trump said he wanted to “hit” several unnamed speakers at the Democratic National Convention “so hard” they would “never recover.”

“I wanted to hit a couple of those speakers so hard,” he told the crowd.

“I was gonna hit one guy in particular, a very little guy,” he said as his audience applauded and cheered. “I was gonna hit this guy so hard his his head would spin, he wouldn’t know what the hell happened.”

Several news organizations, including the New York Times, speculated that the person Donald Trump was referring to was the former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Bloomberg, who is a less-than-towering 5’8”, gave a speech at the DNC on Wednesday evening that was highly critical of Trump, especially of his business record:

Bloomberg: Throughout his career, Trump has left behind a well-documented record of bankruptcies, thousands of lawsuits, angry shareholders, and contractors who feel cheated, and disillusioned customers who feel ripped off. Trump says he wants to run the nation like he’s run his business. God help us.

It was not the first time Trump has made disparaging comments about Bloomberg. On Fox Business in February, Trump said of Bloomberg, “He was a friend of mine. As far as I’m concerned, he’s not a friend of mine anymore.”

At the Davenport rally, Trump continued to say, “I was gonna hit a number of those speakers so hard their heads would spin, they’d never recover… And that’s why I still don’t have certain people endorsing me, they still haven’t recovered.”

It’s also not the first time Trump has mocked an opponent for his perceived diminutive stature. He branded Marco Rubio ‘Lil’ Marco’ for weeks before crushing Rubio in his home state of Florida.

Meanwhile, the Twitter instigator known as @elbloombito jumped into the battle of the billionaires, Tweeting in faux Spanish that Trump should quit the social media network pronto.

Contact Ari Feldman at feldman@forward.com or on Twitter @aefeldman.

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