A6| Saturday/Sunday, February 29 - March 1, 2020 **** THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.
POLITICS
Michael Bloomberg and Donald
Trump, top, at the Trump
National Golf Course in New
Jersey in 2007. A Bloomberg
campaign billboard in Las
Vegas. Left, the two men at a
9/11 memorial service in 2016.develop in New York.
His dealings with the
Bloomberg administration hit
an early setback. City Hall offi-
cials rejected Mr. Trump’s at-
tempt to acquire 2 Columbus
Circle, a property near Central
Park in one of Manhattan’s
landmark intersections.
The city instead sold it to
what is now called the Museum
of Arts and Design. Dan Doc-
toroff, Mr. Bloomberg’s deputy
mayor for economic develop-
ment, said he didn’t hear from
Mr. Trump again until the “The
Apprentice” made its 2004 TV
debut 18 months later.
“The next morning, I got a
call from him out of the blue
simply to tell me the ratings of
‘The Apprentice,’ which he then
proceeded to do for the next
three weeks in a row,” Mr. Doc-
toroff said. “In the develop-
ment world that we were living
in, that sort of post-9/11 period,
we didn’t have that much en-
gagement with him.”
During Mr. Bloomberg’s
third term, Mr. Trump explored
taking over Tavern on the
Green, a restaurant in Central
Park. He got a chilly response
from City Hall. Then came Mr.
Trump’s shot at a golf course
deal in the Bronx.
Adrian Benepe, commis-
sioner of the parks and recre-
ation department for most of
Mr. Bloomberg’s tenure, said
the city had promised decades
earlier to turn the Ferry Point
landfill into a public golf
course.
City officials tried withoutsuccess to find a developer
willing to handle the conver-
sion, which required extensive
and costly environmental reme-
diation.
The city ended up building
the course with taxpayer
money, Mr. Benepe said. He
praised Mr. Trump’s operation
of the Trump Golf Links at
Ferry Point. But he was sur-
prised to hear the Trump cam-
paign in 2016 portray Mr.
Trump’s role as a single-handed
rescue after years of municipal
fumbling.
“It’s a pants-on-fire lie,” Mr.
Benepe said. “It was kind of a
big telling moment that Trumpwould make up a completely
fabricated story that was in-
stantly and easily disprovable.”
A Trump Organization
spokeswoman said, “For over
30 years, before President
Trump and the Trump Organi-
zation stepped in, Ferry Point
was a stalled city project, in
desperate need of rescue.”On the town
R. Couri Hay, a publicist and
New York society maven, said
Mr. Bloomberg is a frequent
guest at charity events and gala
dinners in Manhattan and the
Hamptons. “Mayor Bloombergthropic circles, boardrooms and
elite clubs.
Mr. Trump grew up in a
wealthy New York real-estate
family. He never fit among the
city’s old-money crowd, which
viewed him more as a show-
man than a successful devel-
oper.
Mr. Bloomberg appears on
the ballot for the first time in
the Democratic primary contest
on Tuesday, when more than a
dozen states hold contests. He
has spent more than $600 mil-
lion on his presidential cam-
paign.
For years, the two billion-
aires coexisted peacefully in the
city, trading pleasantries in
public when it suited them.
Some of their children became
friends. Whatever ill feelings
the two men harbored stayed
private. Not anymore.
Mr. Catsimatidis said he
spoke with Mr. Bloomberg last
fall, before the former mayor
launched his bid, and he re-
called Mr. Bloomberg clearly
felt he was more qualified to be
president. “He considers him-
self so much smarter than
Trump and so much richer than
Trump,” he said. “And Trump is
sitting in his chair. Bloomberg
hates him.”
The prospect of a November
election showdown between
Mr. Trump and Mr. Bloomberg
is hard to predict, but the two
men are trading punches like
crosstown rivals.
Mr. Bloomberg is “a loser
who has money but can’t de-
bate and has zero presence,”
Mr. Trump tweeted. He mocks
the ex-mayor’s height, calling
him Mini Mike. Mr. Bloomberg
tweeted that some of their mu-
tual acquaintances in New York
“laugh at you & call you a car-
nival barking clown.”
The billionaires’ bout ignited
nearly four years ago, when Mr.
Bloomberg took the stage at
the Democratic National Con-
vention. Mr. Trump, then the
GOP presidential nominee,
“wants to run the nation like
he’s running his business. God
help us,” Mr. Bloomberg said.
“I’m a New Yorker, and I know
a con when I see one.”
Trump campaign spokesman
Tim Murtaugh said, “Mike
Bloomberg is not equipped to
run this country and President
Trump has made his thoughts
on that clear.”
Mr. Bloomberg declined a
request to be interviewed for
this article. His spokesman, Stu
Loeser said, “Running a golf
course is about the only thing”
Mr. Bloomberg would hire Mr.
Trump to do.
‘The greatest’
Mr. Bloomberg, as mayor,
and Mr. Trump, as a developer,
occasionally crossed paths.
They were never close, people
familiar with their relationship
said, yet they largely pre-
sented—at least publicly—a
warm front.
Mr. Trump said in 2007 that
Mr. Bloomberg would “go down
as one of the great mayors, if
not the greatest” in New York
history. Mr. Bloomberg referred
to Mr. Trump in 2011 as a “New
York icon.” Both called each
other a friend.
Messrs. Trump and
Bloomberg were photographed
together on the golf course. Mr.
Bloomberg twice appeared on
“The Apprentice,” Mr. Trump’s
reality TV show. Mr. Trump
was picked by the city to run a
public golf course.
Given their personal differ-
ences, the cordiality rested on
shaky ground. Mr. Bloomberg
had little to gain from tangling
with a high-profile TV person-
ality. Likewise, Mr. Trump had
little reason to antagonize the
mayor, given the city’s broad
land-use authority.
When Mr. Bloomberg was
elected in 2002, Mr. Trump’s
status as a New York real-es-
tate developer was on the
wane. After running into finan-
cial trouble in the 1990s, he
would eventually shift to
mostly licensing his name to
developers around the globe.
Yet he still had ambitions to
Continued from Page One
New York’s
Billionaire
Battle
Whatever ill feelings
the two men
harbored stayed
quiet. Not anymore.
EZRA SHAW/GETTY IMAGESTrump was never a member of
the powerful trade group, a
spokesman said.
With no access to either
man’s unredacted tax records,
tallying wealth is an educated
guess. Forbes estimated Mr.
Trump’s net worth at about $
billion and Mr. Bloomberg’s
around $60 billion.
Mr. Bloomberg, a lifelong
Democrat, switched to the Re-
publican Party before his first
race for mayor in 2001. He left
the GOP in 2007 as he flirted
with a 2008 presidential bid.
When asked on CNN about Mr.
Bloomberg’s prospects at the
time, Mr. Trump said Mr.
Bloomberg would be a formida-
ble candidate because he could
“spend the money that it takes
to get elected.”
Mr. Bloomberg decided not
to run. He instead sought per-
mission from the City Council
to bust a law prohibiting him
from serving more than two
terms. Mr. Trump joined a cho-
rus supporting Mr. Bloomberg’s
bid for a third term.
“I think in New York City
real estate, developers are
forced into a position where
they try to be accommodative
to the politicians,” said Stephen
Meister, an attorney who has
represented Mr. Trump and
known him since the 1980s.
Messrs. Trump and
Bloomberg took opposite sides
of a national debate in 2010,
but the dispute contained none
of the vitriol now being vol-
leyed between them.
That summer, Mr.
Bloomberg stood on Governors
Island, the Statue of Liberty be-
hind him, to deliver a speech
supporting a proposal to build
a mosque and Islamic commu-
nity center two blocks from
where terrorists had toppled
the World Trade Center.
Opposition grew, drawing in
Mr. Trump. He offered to buy
out one of the investors in the
property on the condition no
mosque be built within five
blocks of ground zero. Mr.
Trump said the proposed loca-
tion wasn’t appropriate.
Real-estate developer Sharif
El-Gamal, one of the investors
in the property, said he was
surprised by Mr. Trump’s offer.
“Even though he was polar-
izing against the project, what
stood out for me is that he is a
rational genius in a way,” Mr.
El-Gamal said. “He is somebody
that understands how to push
buttons and is the greatest
showman that I think we’ve
ever seen.”
After Mr. Trump’s offer was
rebuffed, he appeared on CNN
to criticize the proposal but not
Mr. Bloomberg. “He’s a great
mayor and he’s a great friend
of mine,” Mr. Trump said in the
TV interview. “He feels very
strongly about freedom of reli-
gion, and I understand that.”
In 2016, Mr. Bloomberg, who
at that point had been unaffili-
ated with any political party for
nearly a decade, briefly consid-
ered running for president as
an independent.
Mr. Bloomberg’s younger
daughter, Georgina Bloomberg,
told W Magazine after her fa-
ther decided against the idea
that she was happy to have
avoided campaign mudslinging
with the Trumps.
“Donald Trump and his fam-
ily have always been very
close,” she told the magazine.
“I’m good friends with his kids.
I was not looking forward to
having to watch our fathers go
against each other.”
Ms. Bloomberg and Ivanka
Trump appeared in the 2003
documentary “Born Rich.”
Mr. Bloomberg rejoined the
Democratic Party in 2018 and
launched his bid for the Demo-
cratic nomination last fall.
In October, Georgina
Bloomberg and Eric Trump’s
wife,LaraTrump,wereco-
chairwomen of the Rescue Dogs
Rock NYC charity gala. They
planned to headline a charity
event for rescue dogs at Mar-a-
Lago, the president’s Florida re-
sort, in March. The Palm Beach
Post reported neither would at-
tend because of scheduling
conflicts.
After Mr. Bloomberg’s first
debate appearance this month,
largely panned, Mr. Trump
lashed out at the former mayor.
“Mini Mike Bloomberg’s de-
bate performance tonight was
perhaps the worst in the his-
tory of debates, and there have
been some really bad ones. He
was stumbling, bumbling and
grossly incompetent,” Mr.
Trump tweeted. “If this doesn’t
knock him out of the race,
nothing will.”
Should Mr. Bloomberg face
Mr. Trump in the general elec-
tion, it will only get more
heated, said New York public-
relations executive Howard
Rubenstein: “There’s some
kind of war that will take
place.”MARK RALSTON/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGESCLINT SPAULDING/PATRICK MCMULLAN AGENCYlikes to go out and about,” Mr.
Hay said. “He’s no stranger to
putting on black tie, although
often his is red.”
Mr. Trump “famously
doesn’t go to a lot of parties,”
Mr. Hay said. “He’s more of a
homebody.”
That wasn’t always the case,
said Jean Shafiroff, a Manhat-
tan philanthropist. In the late
1980s, Mr. Trump and Ivana
Trump, his wife at the time,
“were very big on the social
scene and in philanthropy. They
were at the New York City Bal-
let gala, pretty much every-
where.”
Mr. Bloomberg topped the
Chronicle of Philanthropy’s an-
nual ranking of the top 50 big-
gest donors in the U.S. His
charitable contributions totaled
$3.3 billion in the past year. Mr.
Trump hasn’t made the list in
its 20 years.
Mr. Bloomberg gets credit
from many in New York’s real-
estate industry for helping re-
build lower Manhattan after
the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Mr. Trump was more of an out-
sider, with few close friend-
ships among real-estate devel-
opers. As mayor, Mr.
Bloomberg would attend the
Real Estate Board of New
York’s annual banquet. Mr.BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGESDonald Trump at a 2003 New York Yankees game; Rudy Giuliani, left, and Michael Bloomberg, right.