Bloomberg told Trump ‘yes, Donald, I do love you’ in resurfaced clip from 2016

​Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg once told President Trump “yes, Donald, I do love you,” according to a resurfaced video clip from 2016.

Bloomberg, who is among the Democratic presidential candidates running to challenge Trump in November, was speaking at Oxford’s Saïd Business School about a month after the president was elected in November 2016.

He recounted a conversation the two billionaires from New Yorkers had after Trump spoke during a Sept. 11 memorial service.

The president told Bloomberg that he had seen his speech at the Democratic National Convention that July in Philadelphia in which Bloomberg was highly critical of Trump.

“But you really do love me, don’t ya?” Bloomberg recalled Trump asking him. “And I said, ‘Yes, Donald, I do love you, I just disagree with everything you’ve ever said.'”

“And we had a good laugh,” Bloomberg continued. “If you’ve sat and had dinner with Donald Trump, you’d probably walk away saying everything he just said is bulls–t, he can’t be doing that. But you have a good time. He is socially a nice person. Will he be a good president? I hope so. Because we desperately need leadership in the country and the world.”

The Bloomberg campaign downplayed any relationship between the two men.

“When Mike was mayor, he hired Donald Trump to run a city golf course, and that’s the only job he’s hired him for,” Stu Loeser, a senior adviser to the campaign, said in a statement to Politico.

“When Trump was headed to the White House, like most Americans Mike Bloomberg hoped Donald Trump would rise to the occasion. Instead, Trump’s lowered expectations for leadership and failed Americans on issue after issue. That’s why Mike is running to replace him, and Mike’s record and resources are why more and more Americans are supporting Mike,” he said.