Bloomberg says he’s not entering 2016 presidential race

Michael Bloomberg has announced that he will not run for president of the United States, ending months of speculation about the media mogul’s late-stage entry into the 2016 race.

The former New York City mayor reached his decision, he said Monday, after concluding that a three-way race would benefit Donald Trump and therefore threaten the domestic stability and national security of the United States.

“These moves would divide us at home and compromise our moral leadership around the world,” Bloomberg wrote in a column on Bloomberg View, his opinion site. “The end result would be to embolden our enemies, threaten the security of our allies, and put our own men and women in uniform at greater risk.”

Bloomberg had spent months preparing for a potential candidacy, fearing that the two parties might nominate staunchly partisan figures like Trump or Ted Cruz on the right and Bernie Sanders on the left.

Bloomberg even built up the beginnings of a campaign staff, conducted internal polling in nearly two-dozen states and created a campaign website and television ads, one of which he released to The New York Times.