If Republican presidential rivals won’t take on Donald Trump, then a Miami health care magnate and multi-million-dollar donor to Jeb Bush will.
Mike Fernandez plans to call Trump a “narcissistic BULLYionaire with a hunger to be adored” in a full-page newspaper ad to run this Sunday in McClatchy’s Miami Herald and Dec. 14 in Des Moines and Las Vegas.
“You have no idea how furious I am with my friends in the Republican Party who have embraced this guy,” Fernandez told the Herald in an interview Friday.
He emailed the advertisement to various news outlets and, as he put it, “103 friends who are equally frustrated” – with the hopes that they too will take action.
Fernandez didn’t run his plan by the Bush campaign. “They chewed me out” after learning of his efforts, he said.
“My frustration is really with that sector of Republican voters that are so blinded by the demagoguery” of Trump, he said. “I know the campaign – or any other campaign – is not going to say it.”
“This is not about Jeb. This is about us. This is about the voter,” Fernandez added. “We cannot continue to blame Washington. We voted these guys in!”
Fernandez’s ad, first reported by Politico, compares Trump to several dictators: “Look at Hitler in Germany, Mussolini in Italy and Peron in Argentina. When people lose hope, they are susceptible to those who offer to think for them.”
Absent from the list is Cuba’s Fidel Castro.
“He’s too old, and he’s useless,” said Fernandez, a Republican who notably favors President Barack Obama’s re-established diplomatic ties with Havana. “If I put Fidel, it becomes a Cuba thing.”
Regarding Trump, though, “I’m not comparing him to Mother Teresa and a guardian angel,” Fernandez emphasized.
Even if influential donors like him don’t step in, Trump won’t win the White House, Fernandez predicted.
“Hell, no,” he said. “He will not win because he’s unelectable. But he will cause some good people to lose.
“If I have a choice – and you can put it in bold – if I have a choice between Trump and Hillary Clinton, I’m choosing Hillary. She’s the lesser of two evils.”