The gloves are off

| 9:09 am EST February 3, 2020
Dear Palmer Report readers, we all understand the difficult era we're heading into. Major media outlets are caving to Trump already. Even the internet itself and publishing platforms may be at risk. But Palmer Report is nonetheless going to lead the fight. We're funding our 2025 operating expenses now, so we can keep publishing no matter what happens. I'm asking you to contribute if you can, because the stakes are just so high. You can donate here.

Donald Trump stayed up late on Saturday night, ranting at length on Twitter about Mike Bloomberg, and making up laughably false stories about Bloomberg’s height. Trump then repeated these same lies during his Super Bowl interview on Sunday. Even though Bloomberg isn’t currently in contention for the Democratic nomination, Trump has become obsessed with him.

Here’s the intriguing part. On Sunday, the Mike Bloomberg campaign fired back at Donald Trump in kind, pointing out that Trump has no business making fun of other people’s physical attributes because Trump is obese and has an obvious hair problem. This suggests that Bloomberg isn’t even trying to win the nomination. After all, only Republican candidates can get away with hurling these kinds of personal insults, not Democratic candidates. But the key here is that the gloves are off.

Considering Bloomberg’s pledge to spend huge money on advertising in support of whoever the Democratic nominee ends up being, this all suggests that Bloomberg is less interested in winning the presidency, and more interested in simply helping take Trump down – and getting his share of the credit accordingly.

If this is indeed the case, then we have an asymmetrical battle in which Donald Trump and Mike Bloomberg hurl personal insults about each other’s physical appearance, and the actual viable Democratic presidential candidates get to remain above the fray, even as Trump is too distracted by Bloomberg to spend as much time attacking them. You can have whatever opinion you want of the appropriateness of Bloomberg’s fighting tactics, but they’re clearly getting under Trump’s skin.