Republican Congressman Markwayne Mullin suggests Democratic Presidential hopeful Mike Bloomberg hasn’t the slightest idea of what it means to be a farmer.
Bloomberg drew ire on social media on Sunday night after resurfaced footage of the billionaire saying farming required less “gray matter” than modern work went viral, according to Newsweek.
The ex-New York City mayor was called “condescending” and an “enormous clown” after his comments at a university event in 2016 re-emerged.
To which Rep. Mullin replied Monday on Twitter, “If it were that easy @MikeBloomberg , we’d have a lot more farmers and ranchers in this world. Before you go popping your mouth off like that, why don’t you come work with me and my kids on our ranch one day.”
A federal official appointed by President Donald Trump also took a jab at the Democratic primary candidate, saying farming equipment contained “far more tech than a Bloomberg Terminal.”
In a clip from his November 2016 talk at the Saïd Business School of the University of Oxford in England, Bloomberg said: “I could teach anybody, even people in this room, to be a farmer. It’s a process. You dig a hole, you put a seed in, you put dirt on top, add water, up comes the corn.”
“Now comes the information economy, and the information economy is fundamentally different, because it’s built around replacing people with technology,” Bloomberg added. “And the skillsets that you have to learn are how to think and analyze.
“That is a whole degree level different. You have to have a different skillset, you have to have a lot more grey matter.”
The resurfaced footage sparked criticism of Bloomberg across the political spectrum.
Source: Newsweek