Mike Bloomberg is a Republican billionaire running for president. Ignoring the fact that it is obvious that the only reason he is running is to stop Bernie Sanders from raising his taxes, Bloomberg is essentially buying his way to the presidency. His campaign just announced that they have spent half a billion dollars on advertising. That amount of money is incomprehensible to me, and it’s probably also incomprehensible to you.

A lot of people I know tell me that they like Bloomberg because his ideas are realistic, whereas Bernie Sanders is a socialist who wants to take freedom away. They say that Bloomberg actually cares about them, but actually Bloomberg only cares about protecting his fellow members of the ruling class. They are terrified of a Bernie Sanders’ presidency, as they should be. What’s astounding to me is the sheer amount of people who would vote against their own interests to elect Mike Bloomberg as president. What’s even worse is the amount of people who think “I like Sanders, but because he can’t beat Trump, I have no choice but to support Bloomberg.” It’s a foolish narrative that will end up getting Trump elected.

Worst of all is the “Never Trump Republicans.” So many who’ve built up this brand of saying “Orange Man Bad, George Bush Good” are now saying that unless the nominee is Mike Bloomberg that they’ll vote for Trump. Never is defined in the dictionary as “at no time in the past or future; on no occasion; not ever,” but I wouldn’t expect Bill Kristol, one of the guys who misled the country into going to war with Iraq, to actually have principles.

The first piece I ever wrote for the Globe was an opinion piece about Joe Biden, where I compared him to Trump. Mike Bloomberg’s candidacy feels like the universe mocking me about that belief. Bloomberg is so similar to Trump it’s almost unreal.

Both are billionaires from New York with little political background, although Bloomberg gets some credit for being a mayor. Both have said horrible things about women. Both have several non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) with female employees who worked for them. While it’s not necessarily fair to speculate what’s in the agreements you don’t just get 80 NDAs for no reason. Both flew on Jeffrey Epstein’s plane, and both have never explained why they maintained their friendships with him even after he was indicted in 2008 for sex trafficking. Again, it’s not necessarily fair to speculate, but come on, no one goes to the billionaire pedophile island to take in the scenic views.

Which brings me to my point: I’ve seen a lot of people, both on campus, at home over break, and especially online who have spent the past four years saying how Trump is essentially Hitler and that he’s the worst human being alive, but now they say that they support Mike Bloomberg. You think that you’re proving yourself as some noble liberal, showing how you’ll fight to stop the Cheeto Mussolini from getting reelected, but really, you’re showing your true colors, that politics isn’t something real. It’s something for you to tweet about and get social media clout, and that you don’t actually care about all the stuff you complained about, and that if Trump had been a Democrat, you’d be wearing a MAGA hat right now.