George H.W. Bush says Trump is a 'blowhard'
Former President George H.W. Bush offers a bluntly critical take on President Trump, his fellow Republican, in a new book about both Presidents Bush by historian Mark Updegrove called The Last Republicans. The comments came to light in an advance review by The New York Times published Saturday,
"I don't like him," the elder Bush told Updegrove in May of 2016, when Trump was about to formally clinch the GOP nomination. "I don't know much about him, but I know he's a blowhard. And I'm not too excited about him being a leader."
Former President George W. Bush made similar remarks. He said Trump's claim to be his own adviser revealed he "doesn't know what it means to be president." Bush also decried Trump's lack of humility, which he described as "a certain heritage" and expectation in his own family.
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"If you look at the Bush family, it makes perfect sense. Donald Trump is everything that the Bush family is not," Updegrove said in a CNN interview. "George Bush grew up thinking about the greater good. Donald Trump is manifestly narcissistic. It's part of his brand. And that brand is the antithesis of the Bush brand."
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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.
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