In an interview with The New York Times published on Sunday, Howard Schultz, who unleashed Pumpkin Spice Lattes on the masses, confirmed what many have long suspected: he firmly believes the 2020 presidential race could use another billionaire candidate who hasn’t so much as served as a congressional intern, and he’s this close to announcing that he is that very billionaire, having “already begun the groundwork required to be on the ballot in all 50 states” as an independent. (Schultz will reportedly spend the next three months traveling the country—perhaps, say, to Iowa—before making an official announcement.) Unsurprisingly, the news raised the hackles of fellow billionaire Donald Trump, who took time out of his busy day of attacking the media and arguing against the separation of church and state to claim that Schultz has neither the brains nor the balls to run for office:

But Trump wasn’t the only member of the three-comma club to come out against Schultz’s (kind-of) candidacy. On Monday afternoon, Mike Bloomberg issued a statement on his Web site saying that the notion of running as an independent is a horrible idea, and one that will almost certainly put Trump back in the White House for a second term. “I have never been a partisan guy,” the former New York City mayor wrote, “and it’s no secret that I looked at an independent bid in the past. In fact, I faced exactly the same decision now facing others who are considering it. The data was very clear and very consistent. Given the strong pull of partisanship and the realities of the electoral college system, there is no way an independent can win. That is truer today than ever before. In 2020, the great likelihood is that an independent would just split the anti-Trump vote and end up re-electing the president. That’s a risk I refused to run in 2016 and we can’t afford to run it now.”

To some, the idea of Bloomberg warning Schultz off an independent bid is the height of rich, even if he’s clearly 100 percent right. But as the $48 Billion Dollar Man himself points out, he’s been studying up on how to lose elections for years, and after considering independent runs in 2008, 2012, and 2016, he has the data to say definitively it should never be attempted, particularly when it raises the chances of giving an unhinged lunatic another four years in the White House. That’s not to say Bloomberg has an issue with putting another, richer billionaire in office through the two-party system: