George H.W. Bush says Trump is a 'blowhard'

Former Presidents George W. Bush and George H.W. Bush
(Image credit: Pool/Getty Images)

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."

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up
Explore More
Bonnie Kristian

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.