Warren Buffett, left, is the latest billionaire to come out strongly in favor of Hillary Clinton. | Getty Billionaires for Hillary The Clinton campaign is lining up mogul after mogul to say, 'I'm with her' -- and tweak Trump.

“Billionaires for Hillary” isn’t a group the Clinton campaign will be trotting out anytime soon to win over die-hard Bernie Sanders supporters, but in recent days, quite a few megarich business moguls have been publicly appearing with the Democratic nominee to sing her praises.

Just in the past week, Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban made a surprise appearance with Clinton in Pittsburgh, Michael Bloomberg slammed Donald Trump at the Democratic convention in Philadelphia last week and on Monday night, investing guru Warren Buffett, the “Oracle of Omaha,” touted Clinton at a campaign stop in his Nebraska hometown.


Buffett, introducing Clinton at a rally at an Omaha high school, goaded Trump to release his tax returns and mocked his explanations for why he couldn’t release them before the election.

It’s all a concerted effort to undercut one of Trump’s main campaign messages: that he’s a successful businessman who can make America's economy hum again. The hope is to peel off moderate Republicans, independents and others who think the real estate developer and former host of “The Apprentice” is an economic wizard.

Lining up billionaires to dress down Trump, who claims a net worth in excess of $10 billion, isn’t a deliberate strategy by the Clinton team, a campaign official told POLITICO — the timing of the endorsements is purely coincidental.

Two weeks before the convention, Bloomberg spokesman Howard Wolfson received a call from Clinton aide Huma Abedin asking if the former mayor wanted to speak at the convention. Bloomberg thought it was “a little out of left field,” according to Wolfson, but after considering the surprising proposal, accepted and then wrote his speech and shared it with the campaign, which asked for only a few minor stylistic changes.

As for Cuban, he called Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta last Thursday about wanting to endorse her and had dinner about a month ago with Bill Clinton, according to a source with knowledge of the matter. (The Clinton campaign did not comment on the timing of Buffett’s appearance with the Democratic nominee, but noted that he had already endorsed her in September.)

But the parade of moguls lighting into Trump — Bloomberg used his convention speech to highlight his fellow billionaire’s “well-documented record of bankruptcies” and other misdeeds while Cuban trashed his leadership skills and called him a “jagoff” at a Pittsburgh rally — has the clear benefit of undermining the GOP nominee’s claim that his business record makes him uniquely qualified to fix the U.S. economy.

“So much of Trump’s campaign has been about building up this mystique of him as billionaire wunderkind who can take his business skills to the Oval Office,” said Lis Smith, a Democratic consultant and former Martin O’Malley aide. “What Cuban, Bloomberg, Buffett do is show that Trump — unlike them — is all smoke and mirrors: He got his start with a huge check from his dad, has filed for bankruptcy multiple times, and ripped off working class people right and left to increase his profit margins.”

Getting Trump’s wealthy peers to trash him also helps to lure moderate “Country Club” Republicans who care a lot about the economy, but are nervous about Trump and aren’t sold on Clinton yet, Democrats said.

“Having other successful businessmen saying despite being a wealthy businessman, you still have to have a common set of core values around honesty and integrity and openness and ethics” is important, said Democratic strategist Hilary Rosen. “So I think it’s a signal to other business leaders across the country that Hillary Clinton is the thoughtful choice if you care about growth and stability in the economy.”

The three endorsements also give “permission” to moderate Republicans and independents to back a liberal Democrat they might otherwise shun, said Rosen.

“You always want to be adding to your team, and fortunately Trump hasn’t gotten the message," said Obama 2012 deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter, who added that it can also mean additional fundraising dollars because it can open up the wallets of the billionaires’ friends and associates.

Bob Shrum, a senior adviser for John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign and a longtime advocate of embracing populist themes on the campaign trail, said Cuban and Buffett aren’t just rich people but they “transcend” their wealth and are cultural icons with millions of admirers.

Bloomberg, who toyed with running for president, also is “a very substantial person and people think he’s ultra-competent,” said Shrum. “And in essence, what he said was Trump was incompetent and insane. I think that has a big impact.”

The Clinton campaign has welcomed the endorsements, relishing the opportunity to use their business bona fides to tweak Trump. “Both of those gentlemen are good about knowing something about the economy,” Podesta told Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC on Monday, referring to Buffett and Bloomberg. “Donald Trump’s claim to fame [is] four bankruptcies. Their claim to fame is they’ve managed a good business.”

But appearing too buddy-buddy with billionaires holds risks for Clinton, other Democrats noted. Trump has portrayed Clinton as bought and paid for by Wall Street, and bragged at a campaign event on Monday that he had taken in just $19,000 from hedge funds, compared with tens of millions for his opponent. ("I don’t even want it. I think I’ll send it back,” Trump said.) And as she seeks to consolidate the Democratic Party behind her candidacy, being seen as too close to billionaires could alienate supporters of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, her vanquished primary opponent.

“Intuitively people think that rich people have too much power over politics,” said Jonathan Tasini, a national surrogate and delegate for Sanders. “Will she go ahead as president and implement the Democratic Party platform’s main issues? That’s something that is of great concern to people, and certainly a significant part of the Sanders base needs to be convinced that this is the case.”

Many liberals cheered last week as Bloomberg ripped Trump as a “disaster in the making” and have enjoyed Cuban’s gibes at Trump’s allegedly low cash flow. But the sheer amount of money these billionaires have could be a red flag to middle-class Americans who are in midst of the slowest recovery since 1949.

According to Forbes, Buffett’s net worth stands at $64.7 billion and Bloomberg at $48.3 billion, though Cuban has only a measly $3.2 billion.

“It’s the kind of thing that reminds everyone that she’s talking to a lot of people, many of whom are very much among the 1 percent or 1/100th of 1 percent,” said Dean Baker, co-director of the liberal Center for Economic and Policy Research, who channeled fears on the left that Clinton will privilege the advice she gets from billionaires over that of more downscale groups.

“I think most progressive labor types think that Clinton will obviously listen and she’ll probably do some of the things that labor and other progressive groups want but that’s not going to be her core,” he added. “When she’s sitting down deciding what to do it’s not going to be a bunch of labor people there, it’s not going to be a lot of progressive people there.”