Bloomberg's campaign manager warns fellow Dems: 'Trump is winning'

The manager of billionaire Michael Bloomberg's 2020 Democratic presidential campaign says President Donald Trump "is winning" the race so far, in explaining why his boss decided to make a last-second White House bid.

What are the details?

Fox News reported that campaign manager Kevin Sheekey told CNN's "At This Hour with Kate Bolduan" on Monday, "Right now, Donald Trump is winning. He is winning that election. It is very tough for people who don't live in New York or California to understand that, but that is what's happening."

"Mike was doing everything he could from the sidelines and he finally decided it wasn't enough to sit on the sidelines and he needed to do what he could to alter that dynamic," Sheekey said of his boss.

Sheekey gave some insight into the Bloomberg campaign's strategy, explaining, "What we're focusing on is defeating Trump. If you look at the polls, and people can't focus on this [enough], the general election is in six states — that 's it. It's in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Florida, and Arizona. That's the whole general election."

After months of speculation, Bloomberg officially joined the race on Sunday, calling President Trump "an existential threat to our country and our values." The former mayor of New York City threw his hat in the ring after missing the deadline to be on the ballot in a number of early primary states — despite declaring in the spring that he would not make a run in 2020.

Anything else?

Bloomberg — a staunch gun control advocate who has given millions to the cause — does have name recognition. Even prior to his official declaration over the weekend, the New York Democrat was polling at an average of 2.3 percent according to RealClearPolitics — putting him ahead of candidates who had been in the race for several months, including Sens. Amy Klobuchar (Minn.) and Cory Booker (N.J.), as well as fellow billionaire Tom Steyer.

Yet Bloomberg's entry is already controversial. Bloomberg News, the outlet founded by Bloomberg, also announced Sunday that it would not investigate Bloomberg or any of his Democratic rivals, but that it "will continue to investigate the Trump administration."