Michael Bloomberg will not run for president in 2020

Tom Williams | CQ Roll Call | Getty Images

Michael Bloomberg appears on stage at the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia, Pa., after the VP spoke on the third day of the Democratic National Convention, July 27, 2016.

Michael Bloomberg will not run for president in 2020, the billionaire businessman said in a statement posted online on Tuesday.

Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York, had been toying with the idea of a presidential run for months and was floated as a candidate in every presidential cycle going back to 2008. Facing a packed field of Democratic contenders, Bloomberg said he was “clear-eyed” about the obstacles to securing the party’s nomination.

“I know what it takes to run a winning campaign, and every day when I read the news, I grow more frustrated by the incompetence in the Oval Office. I know we can do better as a country. And I believe I would defeat Donald Trump in a general election,” Bloomberg said. “But I am clear-eyed about the difficulty of winning the Democratic nomination in such a crowded field.”

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The philanthropist made his fortune selling informational devices to financial services companies and was an influential force as a Democratic donor during the 2018 midterms, pledging more than $100 million to candidates.

Though Bloomberg will not run for president, he said he would expand his environmental philanthropy, and announced the launch of a new project, Beyond Carbon, that he described as a “grassroots effort to begin moving America as quickly as possible away from oil and gas and toward a 100 percent clean energy economy.”

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