De Blasio on 2020 bid: ‘I never rule things out’

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) on Sunday said he is “focused on the job I have” but “never” rules out the possibility of running for president.

“You never know what life brings,” de Blasio told CNN’s “State of the Union.”

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio on if he is considering a 2020 presidential bid: “I never rules things out because you never know what life brings, but I am focused on the work I am doing now.” #CNNSOTU pic.twitter.com/DrwQLqNJWM

— State of the Union (@CNNSotu) January 13, 2019

{mosads}”There’s a lot of good candidates” for the Democratic nomination in 2020, he added. “There’s not a consensus yet in our party. There is still, I think, a lack of recognition that if you have tens of millions of people hurt, we’re not speaking to them. Donald Trump spoke to them.”

He went on to say that then-candidate Trump during the 2016 election “was speaking to people’s pain and challenges.”

“Unfortunately, we could hear a lot of the negativity we later saw in Donald Trump, divisiveness, too,” he added. “But on the economic issues, he understood people were hurting. Their lives were getting harder, not easier.”

De Blasio said that regardless of whether he runs for the 2020 nomination, he wants to push the party to be bolder.

“We could go a lot farther. We could be a lot bolder than what we’re doing,” he said.

De Blasio last week announced that New York City would begin guaranteeing universal health care to residents.

“Health care isn’t just a right in theory, it must be a right in practice,” de Blasio tweeted. “Today I’m announcing a plan to guarantee health care for all New Yorkers. Through our own public option and a new program called NYC Care, we’ll ensure the first stop for people isn’t the emergency room.”

De Blasio on Sunday said, “Our plan is guaranteed health care for all and says this should be a priority to ensure that we have a decent kind of society.”

He added that his plan is an example of what Democrats should offer as part of a national platform.

“This is the kind of thing Democrats should stand for,” he said. “If we say to the American people our job is to get you health care no matter what, no matter how much money you make or what your situation, that’s the kind of thing that is going to resonate with the American people because so many Americans, tens of millions are struggling to make ends meet. Health care is one of their biggest expenses.”