The billionaire media mogul and 2020 White House hopeful Michael Bloomberg has come under fire for describing fellow Democratic presidential candidate Cory Booker as “well spoken” in an interview with CBS News. Booker is one of only two African American candidates remaining in the race.

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Bloomberg was asked about Booker’s complaint that there are “more billionaires than black people who’ve made the December debate stage” following the withdrawal of the California senator Kamala Harris earlier this week.

“Cory Booker endorsed me a number of times, and I endorsed Cory Booker a number of times,” Bloomberg told CBS’s Gayle King. “He’s very well spoken; he’s got some very good ideas. It would be better the more diverse any group is, but the public is out there picking and choosing and narrowing down this field.”

Bloomberg argued those who are complaining about the lack of diversity among the Democratic frontrunners should have fielded their own candidate.

“Lots of people can enter,” the former New York mayor said. “If you wanted to enter and run for president of the United States, you could have done that. But don’t complain to me that you’re not in the race. It’s up to you.”

But Bloomberg’s comments about Booker kicked off a round of criticism that he had promoted a racist trope that belittled the New Jersey senator’s intelligence.

Alexi McCammond (@alexi) Cory Booker is “well spoken” (!) Bloomberg says. Ask yourself how many times you hear a POC say the same of a white person https://t.co/8St6Hp4o6n

Dartunorro D. Clark (@DartDClark) Bloomberg calls Cory Booker, a Rhodes Scholar, “well spoken” https://t.co/wUYZZ5d72L

Booker responded by saying he was “taken aback” by Bloomberg’s comments. “Mike and I have known each other for a long time,” Booker told the podcast Signal Boost, adding that he has a “great deal of regard” for the former New York mayor.

But Booker added: “It’s sort of stunning at times that we are still revisiting these sort of tired tropes.” The senator expressed hope Bloomberg would revisit the comments, but he said it was “problematic” that so many people still did not see what was wrong with such language.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Cory Booker: ‘taken aback’. Photograph: Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty Images

Booker also made a point to return to his concerns about the Democratic party taking black voters for granted, particularly in the wake of Harris’s withdrawal. “We can’t win without the enthusiastic support of black voters, and we saw that between 2016 and 2012,” Booker said.

Deval Patrick is the only other African American candidate in the Democratic field.

Bloomberg’s comments seemed to echo controversial statements made by fellow 2020 candidate Joe Biden when the former vice-president was running for the white House in 2008. At that time Biden called his then rival Barack Obama “articulate and bright and clean”.

Biden was widely condemned for the remarks and his campaign never took off, though the spat did not prevent Obama from choosing him as his running mate and successfully winning the White House twice.

Bloomberg’s late entry into the race has been marred by controversy after it was revealed the eponymous news service he owns – Bloomberg News – would not investigate his campaign. He has also been criticized for a strategy of saturating the air waves with television ads, using millions of dollars of his own fortune and far out spending his more conventional rivals.