[guest post by JVW]

Because that’s just what the party is searching for!

Former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg is expected to file paperwork ahead of this week’s early deadline to enter the Alabama Democratic presidential primary as he seriously considers entering the race to take on President Trump in next year’s general election, according to The New York Times.

Howard Wolfson, a close adviser to Mr. Bloomberg, said on Thursday that Bloomberg is “increasingly concerned that the current field of candidates is not well positioned” to defeat President Trump.

“If Mike runs, he would offer a new choice to Democrats built on a unique record running America’s biggest city, building a business from scratch and taking on some of America’s toughest challenges as a high-impact philanthropist,” Wolfson said.

It makes a lot of sense. Mr. Bloomberg (born February 14, 1942) hits that sweet spot where he isn’t veering towards senility like Bernard Sanders (born September 8, 1941) yet at the same time he doesn’t have the same impulsiveness of youth that Joe Biden (born November 20, 1942) continually exhibits. If you are worried that Tom Steyer (estimated net worth of $1.6 billion) will come off as a veritable pauper against Donald Trump (estimated net worth of $3.1 billion), then you are no doubt cheered by the idea that the Democrats — the party of the working man and woman — now have someone in the race whose net worth (estimated at $52 billion) is obscenely higher. If you like Elizabeth Warren but worry that deep down inside she isn’t enough of a busy-body regulator for your tastes, you now can vote for the guy who banned Big Gulps and trans fats in New York. If you aren’t quite comfortable with President Trump’s personality yet are still worried that the Oval Office requires a megalomaniacal New Yorker who spends half his time in Florida, then you now have a champion in the other party.

I want to reemphasize what I have been saying since Campaign 2020 kicked off: I was entirely wrong in all of my predictions in the last Presidential election cycle, so nothing I write here should be taken to have any level of insight. That said, I simply can’t imagine Michael Bloomberg rising to the top in today’s intersectionality-obsessed Democrat Party. But in this entirely stupid age I won’t be surprised if the level of suck is yet to overflow the tub.

– JVW

A Web site called the Popular Information newsletter reports:

A heavily-promoted contest to win breakfast with President Trump in New York City on September 26 was a fraud. The purported winner of the contest, Joanna Kamis, did not have breakfast with Trump. Instead, she was invited to a breakfast at a New York City restaurant that Trump did not attend. Kamis was later permitted to take a photo with Trump.

The promise of breakfast with Trump was used in hundreds of Facebook ads to entice supporters to donate money. The ads were clear that donors would be entered into a contest to share a meal with Trump. “This is your LAST CHANCE to meet me this quarter, and I really want to discuss our Campaign Strategy for the rest of the year with you over breakfast,” Trump said in a Facebook ad in September.

Kamis’s contest is one of fifteen in which winners were promised a meal with the President. The campaign is required by law to provide information regarding the names of the contest winners but has persistently ignored media requests. After the newsletter published the fact yesterday that the campaign had not verified that anyone had won any of these contests, the Daily Caller trotted out Kamis as ostensible “proof” that the allegations were bogus.

In other words, Kamis is not necessarily representative of all contest winners. She’s the best they’ve got — and she wasn’t given what she was promised. The other “winners” might not even exist. Either way, there is, to date, even from a Trump-sympathetic outlet like the Daily Caller, not one shred of evidence that anyone has had a meal with the President after fifteen contests promising one.

If there are no winners — and winners might emerge, but keep in mind Trump’s pattern, as shown when he tried to steal money from veterans during his campaign, of promising things that he has no intention of delivering on — if there are no winners, this may be fraud:

Richard Painter, a former associate counsel in the Bush White House, told Newsweek that the failure to deliver on the promised meals with Trump could be criminal. “You’re raising campaign cash, you’re lying to people. If you obtain money from people through false pretenses that’s a violation of federal mail fraud and wire fraud statutes,” Painter said.

Trumpists will call this petty, as they do with everything Trump-related, even though they would have heart attacks by the dozen if Joe Biden did the same. But it’s dishonest and slimy fraud, typical of this criminal cretin.

[Cross-posted at The Jury Talks Back.]