Warren Buffett: I'd Support Michael Bloomberg If He Ran For President In 2020

"I think he would be a very good president," the Berkshire Hathaway CEO and chairman said of his fellow billionaire.
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Billionaire Warren Buffett on Monday said he would throw his support behind billionaire Michael Bloomberg should he run for president in 2020.

The chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, during an interview with CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” said the former New York City mayor would make for “a very good president.”

“If Mike Bloomberg announced tomorrow that he was a candidate, I would say I’m for him,” Buffett said. “I think that he knows how to run things. I think he’s got the right goals for America. He understands people. He understands the market system.”

Though he has voted for Democratic and Republican presidential candidates, Buffett is widely viewed as liberal-leaning. He endorsed Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election and has been an outspoken critic of President Donald Trump.

Bloomberg, 77, has been flirting with a 2020 presidential run for several months. He announced in October that he changed his voter registration back to Democratic after becoming a Republican and then an independent in the last few decades.

The media mogul bashed Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, another billionaire, for potentially running for president in 2020 as an independent, claiming a third-party candidate would only help to get the president re-elected by splintering the anti-Trump vote.

“I have seen enough data over many years to know that anyone running for POTUS as an independent will split the anti-incumbent, anti-Trump vote,” Bloomberg tweeted last month in response to Schultz’s announcement that he is considering a 2020 run. “The stakes couldn’t be higher. We can not afford the risk of spoiler politics that result in Trump’s re-election.”

Buffett on Monday agreed with that assessment of a third-party candidate in 2020, saying, “I hope no third-party candidate runs. ... I think third-party candidates can thwart, actually, the will of the people.”

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