AOC says Bloomberg would lead to an 'even worse' version of Trump in the future

'If we beat Trump and go back to the same policies that we had before, a worse Trump is going to come'

New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has warned that electing former New York mayor Mike Bloomberg as president would set the stage for a candidate “even worse” than Donald Trump in the future.

Ms Ocasio-Cortez is fully against nominating Mr Bloomberg as candidate for the 2020 election.

Speaking on The Breakfast Club on radio station Power 105.1 AM on Tuesday, she said: “We obviously have to beat Trump. But if we beat Trump and go back to the same policies that we had before, a worse Trump is going to come. A Trump that’s more sophisticated, whose fascism is less obvious, is going to come and things could get even worse.”

Ms Ocasio-Cortez has thrown her support behind Senator Bernie Sanders, having spoken at campaign rallies and acted as a surrogate in Iowa when he was held up in Washington for the Senate impeachment trial.

Adding that Mr Bloomberg’s record shows the kind of president he would be, she cites his controversial stop and frisk policy and his remarks about how the ending of redlining contributed to the global financial crisis in 2008, as examples.

She said: “A lot of people don’t know Bloomberg. We’re here in New York City. We lived under his tenure as mayor. We know exactly what he did. This is part of what he’s doing when he comes in, swoops in super late in the game with billions of dollars at his disposal and is able to kind of shower the airwaves with his cash.”

She added that despite apologies for the stop and frisk policy, Mr Bloomberg has not done enough to redeem himself in the eyes of minority voters.

“I think that redemption in politics is an acceptable thing, but you have to earn it,” she said. “It needs to be proven through years of work and evolution for the right thing.”

“This is what happened with Bloomberg. He was down with stop and frisk. He fought for it in the courts, the courts overturned it as unconstitutional. He still fought it, defended it after him being mayor and then … five minutes before he runs for president, he says: ‘OK, maybe this wasn’t the right policy.'”

Since entering the race in November, Mr Bloomberg has bombarded media markets across the country with a $400m advertising blitz. This earned him a place in the last two Democratic primary debates.

Mr Bloomberg is currently polling at 15.7 per cent nationally, behind vice president Joe Biden (16.3 per cent) and Mr Sanders (27.7 per cent).