Competition really does bring out the worst in some people. And listening to the mean-spirited words flying out of Donald Trump's mouth, you'd think he'd always had a deep-seated disdain for fellow Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush. Trump has dismissed Bush's immigration stance as "baby stuff." Bush's education proposals? "Pathetic," says Trump. The GOP's most inflammatory 2016 candidate even tweeted earlier this week that Bush likes "Mexican illegals because of his wife," who was born and raised in Mexico, before deleting the tweet.
But wind the clock back 15 years, and Trump's tune on Bush sounds a whole lot different.
"Florida Governor Jeb Bush is a good man," Trump wrote back in 2000, in his book The America We Deserve. (BuzzFeed resurfaced the quote this week.) "I've held fundraisers for him. He's exactly the kind of political leader this country needs now and will very much need in the future."
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Trump went on to call Bush "bright, tough, and principled" and predicted that "we could get another president from the Bushes" and Jeb could very well "be the one."
And that education policy that Trump now thinks is pathetic? Back in 2000, he called Bush's approach "good policy." Trump, in fact, used to support Bush so much that he co-hosted a fundraiser for Bush's gubernatorial election campaign at Trump Tower in Manhattan in December 1997. CNN reports that this $500-a-head fundraiser was key in helping Bush defeat his Democratic rivals.
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