We thought the big story swirling around the nascent presidential campaign of liberal multi-billionaire Michael Bloomberg this week would have been the multiple allegations of sexual harassment chronicled by reporter Michael Kranish of The Washington Post.
We thought wrong …
Bloomberg’s candidacy endured a proverbial “hold my Dom Pérignon” moment after a 2016 clip of him insulting farmers and factory workers went viral.
“I could teach anybody, even the people in this room (to farm),” Bloomberg told an audience at Oxford University in November 2016. “You dig a hole, you put a seed in, you put dirt on top, add water, up comes the corn.”
Wow …
Bloomberg didn’t just insult farmers, though. He also derided the lack of brainpower required to be a factory worker.
“You put the piece of metal in the lathe, you turn the crank in the direction of the arrow, and you can have a job,” he said.
Yeah … you gotta love these progressive populists, right?
The only question we have is this: How much money will Bloomberg spend trying to walk these comments back?
According to Bloomberg, the jobs requiring real “grey matter” – or brain cells – are those “built around replacing people with technology.”
“That is a whole degree level different,” he said. “You have to have a different skill set, you have to have a lot more gray matter.”
Not surprisingly, Bloomberg’s comments were greeted with widespread indignation from individuals occupying points all along the political spectrum – drawing comparisons to former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s infamous “deplorables” comment.
Specifically, the comments provided further evidence that grandstanding liberal politicians have no understanding of the issues facing America’s working class citizenry – nor any desire to improve their lots in life.
“Bloomberg wouldn’t last three seconds as a farmer,” Donald Trump Jr. tweeted. “But like his comments on minorities, you can tell he really hates regular hardworking Americans.”
(Click to view)
(Via: Getty Images)
Our intrepid South Carolina politico Justin Evans used the gaffe to poke fun at Bloomberg’s diminutive stature.
“Can he even see over the steering wheel of a tractor?” Evans wondered. “Seriously for a billionaire to be that stupid is really quite astonishing.”
We agree with Evans. Bloomberg’s statements displayed a stunning level of ignorance and condescension, which was laid bare in some of the responses to what he said.
“Farm tractors and combines pack far more tech than a Bloomberg Terminal,” noted Federal Communications Commission (FCC) commissioner Brendan Carr. “They are mobile data centers. America’s farmers are now experts in agronomy, tech, data analytics (and) other advanced skills. Grateful for their work.”
The comments also recalled a famous quote from the late U.S. president Dwight Eisenhower.
“Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil, and you’re a thousand miles from the corn field,” Eisenhower said during a September 1956 address at Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois.
Bloomberg is obviously still a long way from becoming the Democratic presidential nominee. He was late jumping into the race, is conceding the early-voting states (including Iowa and South Carolina, two big agricultural states) and as we noted in a recent post he has several serious issues he must overcome in order to win the trust and support of several key demographics in the Democratic party.
This #FarmFlub won’t help …
Working in Bloomberg’s favor, though? Money … and the weakness of the 2020 Democratic field against U.S. president Donald Trump.
We will have to see how this situation shakes out, but with the sexual assault allegations and a major gaffe going viral online, Bloomberg’s candidacy is losing momentum at a time when it needs to be ramping things up.
-FITSNews
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