Former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg officially announced he's running for president

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Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg speaks with the media after touring the W.H. Bagshaw Company during an exploratory trip on January 29, 2019 in Nashua, New Hampshire

• Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg officially announced on Sunday that he was running for president as a Democrat.
• In a statement and a video released Sunday, Bloomberg took aim at President Donald Trump, a fellow wealthy New York-made businessman.
• Bloomberg has had a closely watched few weeks since it was reported he was contemplating a run, and raised eyebrows across the Democratic field when it was reported he was planning to launch a $100 million TV ad campaign. 
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Former New York City Mayor and media mogul Michael Bloomberg officially announced on Sunday that he was running as a Democrat in the 2020 presidential election.

In a widely released statement, Bloomberg took aim at President Donald Trump and urged voters to embark on "rebuilding America."

"I'm running for president to defeat Donald Trump and rebuild America," the statement read. "We cannot afford four more years of President Trump's reckless and unethical actions. He represents an existential threat to our country and our values. If he wins another term in office, we may never recover from the damage. The stakes could not be higher. We must win this election. And we must begin rebuilding America. I believe my unique set of experiences in business, government, and philanthropy will enable me to win and lead.

In his first ad for his campaign, Bloomberg is painted as a champion of working Americans and the middle class, and despite his $52 billion net worth, he emphasizes how different he is from Trump, a fellow New York-made business magnate.

The ad highlights 77-year-old Bloomberg's middle-class upbringing in Medford, Massachusetts, before the narrator said he "had to work his way through college" and built Bloomberg LP from "a single room to a global entity" before going on to lead job creation and development across New York City in the wake of September 11 in three terms as mayor.

Unlike Trump, Bloomberg appears to be poised to release his tax returns, as he routinely did while serving as mayor after initially refusing. 

The billionaire has already had a turbulent few weeks since news broke that he was contemplating entering the race.

Last week, he appeared to take a campaign-trail style approach to publicly admitting fault and apologizing for the controversial "stop and frisk" policy practiced by his police force that a federal judge later ruled in 2013 violated the constitutional rights of racial minorities, though the former mayor had often defended the practice even after he left office.

Previous reports that Bloomberg was launching a $100 million TV ad campaign in several key primary states raised eyebrows as it marks the single biggest ad buy in American campaign history. Fellow 2020 contenders Sen. Bernie Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren publicly admonished the news.

Bloomberg's statements that he will not accept donations and will self-fund his campaign stands in stark contrast to most of the crowded Democratic field's donor-driven funding.

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