Trump says Barbara Bush was 'nasty to me, but she should be'

Not wanting to let a deceased former first lady have the final word, President Trump responded on Thursday to things Barbara Bush said about him in a new biography.

"I have heard that she was nasty to me, but she should be," Trump told The Washington Times. "Look what I did to her sons." Before Bush died last year at age 92, she spoke extensively with journalist Susan Page, and even shared her diaries. Page's new book, The Matriarch: Barbara Bush and the Making of an American Dynasty, includes Bush's thoughts on Trump, including her feelings on his treatment of her son, Jeb Bush, who ran against Trump in the 2016 Republican presidential primary.

Page wrote that in June 2016, Bush had a health "crisis" connected to her congestive heart failure and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. She told Page "the tumultuous presidential campaign in general and Trump's ridicule of son Jeb Bush in particular had riled her up." Trump insulted Jeb Bush numerous times, calling him "low-energy" and mocking him after his mother appeared in a campaign ad, saying Jeb "desperately needed his mommy to help him."

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The book also reveals that in the 1990s, Bush wrote in her diary that Trump's name was synonymous with "greed, selfishness, and ugly," and after the election, a friend gave her a countdown clock to the final day of Trump's term, which she kept by her bedside. Her disdain for Trump wasn't a secret made public by the book — prior to her death, Bush told CBS News she had no idea how any woman could vote for Trump.