Michael Bloomberg is the Democrat who could run the most competitive campaign against President Donald Trump in 2020, according to Corey Lewandowski, Trump’s first 2016 campaign manager. 

Speaking at a Christian Science Monitor event on Wednesday, Lewandowski said, “He could make it through a primary and be very competitive in a general election,” referring to the former New York City mayor. 

Like Trump, Bloomberg is a successful businessman. He could use some of his billions to largely self-fund a presidential campaign. 

That combined with his “100 percent name ID” would make him a formidable opponent, Lewandowski argued. 

“I think it would be a very competitive race and it would be a race that wouldn’t require enormous amounts of time fundraising,” he said. 

Bloomberg could even run a campaign similar to Trump ran his in 2016 by trying to parlay his business acumen and success in creating private sector jobs into an argument that he is an outsider who can come in and do the same for government, Lewandowski suggested. 

Nonetheless, Lewandowski projected confidence that his former boss could prevail in a hypothetical race against Bloomberg.

“I don’t know if he could beat Donald Trump,” he said. “The electoral map is so difficult.”

In another 2020 prediction, Lewandowski said he doesn’t see Vice President Mike Pence trying to run in a primary against Trump. Lewandowski is a senior strategist for the Great America Committee, Pence’s political action committee. 

“I don’t see any scenario, whatsoever, where the vice president would say I want to challenge the president,” he said.

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