Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg conceded he would have lost to Donald Trump in the presidential election.
Bloomberg, who had toyed with running as an independent, made his comments in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter.
"We did a lot of polling," he said. "We actually had commercials made. We had lawyers on retainer to get on the ballots. We could do all of that. That was not an issue.
"It was that what we found was that a third of the public is pretty rock solid, will vote Democratic. I think if Trump were the Democratic candidate they would vote for him. A third rock solid Republican. If Hillary [Clinton] were their candidate, they would vote for her.
"Unfortunately, the way the Constitution is written, you have to have a majority of the electoral votes, not a plurality but a majority. An independent candidate cannot get a majority if two-thirds of the vote is already spoken for."
As a result, he could not have won, Bloomberg admitted.
"Running and knowing you can't win is not a smart thing to do," he said. "That just gets in the way of the political process. If I had run and we got Donald Trump, my obit would be I was the guy that gave you Donald Trump. They wouldn't have cared about anything else I had done in my life."
Bloomberg said he has talked to Trump once since the election and the two decided to put their differences behind them.
"He asked my advice on how to attract people, and I gave it to him," Bloomberg said. "I'm not sure he did any of it. He probably didn't, but that's OK. He gave me his private cell phone number and said if you ever need anything, call me. I think I entered it into my address book on my iPhone. I'm not sure. I have not talked to him since then."