While Dick Cheney has endorsed Harris, there have been no comments from other senior Republicans from Bush’s era
The MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell this week hit out at George W Bush, the Republican former president, for refusing to weigh in on America’s looming presidential election.
“All any decent person wants him to do is to say, ‘Don’t vote for Donald Trump, and here’s why,’ and he won’t even do that,” O’Donnell told the Fast Politics podcast, of the Republican president who was in office from 2001 to 2009.
Increasingly, Bush – and some other top Republicans from his political era – are looking lonely in their ongoing refusal to take a side in an election in which many have warned that US democracy is under threat from Trump’s open sympathies with autocracy.
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big fucking tough guy when it comes to sending other peoples’ kids out to die for a bullshit war based on outright lies
but when it’s time to actually take the correct stance on something, he buckles like a lawn chair under the average cod cosplaying maga chud
He’s super busy painting dog pictures.
cod cosplaying maga chud
Had to recalibrate my mental image from the fish costume I imagined before remembering that Call of Duty exists 😄
I mean, Bush and Trump are in direct competition for worst presidents in living memory.
…and they both kinda jimmy with elections. They have a lot in common really so it makes sense he’ll be averse to calling out someone whose not that dissimilar to himself.
Also Bush has a generational bonding to the GOP, so there’s probably some level of moral compromise in that.
Depends on what “recent” memory is for you. I’ve got Reagan and Trump neck-and-neck. While Bush should be tried for war crimes, he’s nowhere close to as bad as Trump. I’d put Bush and Clinton in the cage match.
Reagan was well liked and won by a landslide, I hate to say. By the time Bush Jr came around the mask was coming off. Both Jr (-0.51%) and Trump (-2.09%) lost the popular vote when they were elected. Hindsight being what it is, Reagan bad, Bush bad, Bush Jr bad, and Trump bad.
Being popular does not make you a good president.
Of course he won the vote… otherwise he wouldn’t be president. It’s what he did when he was there that mattered. And boy. Did he fuck everything up good. Still is fucked up. Hell. He is probably the reason trump exists basically.
Right, in hindsight, as far as actual policy and actions taken as president, Reagan is the worst in modern times. We wouldn’t have Bush or Trump or Project 2025 without Reagan.
If you were to remove everything around 9/11 and Iraq from Bush’s presidency, he’s relatively okay as both president and person. He, arguably, did great things to help immigrants and minorities and children. Not sure how No Child Left Behind is seen these days. I think Bush did more to help the disadvantaged than Clinton. But, to really assess each and every action a president takes would require a college semester. And your perspective on good or bad may be influenced by what you believe the job of government is. Reagan’s entire pitch and lasting legacy as a Republican icon was to dismantle the federal government, eliminate “social” programs, put “bad people” in jail, promote corporatocracy, fool the middle class to believe in the trickle down effect. Not to mention the entire Iran Contra ordeal. I mean, we don’t have super solid evidence about Trump’s associations with foreign countries / leaders. Trump’s probably too stupid and narcissistic to care about anything other than opening Trump buildings and golf courses in other countries.
Trump’s worst actions as president were his judicial appointments. He’s easily the worst person to hold the office as president in all of US history, but as far as worst president in modern times, I think Regan has it over on him.
It’s actually a tough judgement call I would say. You’re right about everything, but you shouldn’t underestimate the damage Trumpism has done (and is doing) to the American people and politics. Trump has managed to radicalise millions of people and as Germany will attest after the fall of Nazism, de-brainwashing cultists is a herculean task that will often fail - many Germans carried their indoctrinated beliefs with them until that whole generation died off.
Reagan still might be worse on balance, but it’s probably close.
Trumpism
is different than Trump the president.
The presidential actions taken by President Reagan are different than the choices Americans are making to endorse and follow Trump. It’s the actions Reagan took as president that have in large part brainwashed the public and created the environment where people are flocking towards people like Trump.
Trump the president is a symptom of the problems created by Reagan, Stone, Cheney, and the Heritage Foundation. Trump the brand is the epitome of Reaganomics and corporatocracy.
Reagan set the seeds for dismantling our trust in government and putting it into corporations and celebrities. Reagan (the actor?!) is the prime modern-time example of the people ignoring politics in favor of celebrity.
I would argue that Reagan’s influence and GOP brainwashing far surpasses Trump’s to the point that the vast majority of people in this country are wholly unaware of its existence. Though, yes, the extremism that Trumpism has fostered is certainly more dangerous to the public and democracy. I just don’t blame Trump for all of it. America chose to elect him president for a reason. I believe that has more to do with Reagan than with Trump.
Great points! The idea that Trump is a symptom, a logical function of a longer and deeper process is something I absolutely agree with and I think needs to be spoken of more. I guess my follow-up question would be, is Reagan really the seed or is he too perhaps an almost inevitable product of the American culture?
Reagan was well liked and won by a landslide
America is a fascist country and it was particularly fascist during his '84 election bid. Winning in a landslide on a white supremacist, anti-LGBT, New Red Scare platform is not a point in his favor. Might as well laud the administrations of Andrew Jackson or William McKinley.
Both Jr (-0.51%) and Trump (-2.09%) lost the popular vote when they were elected.
Given the degree of electoral suppression common to the post 14th Amendment American electoral system, those numbers are likely much worse. But they’re also illustrative of the consequences of electoral strategy. Republicans don’t care how much you run up the score in California if they can win on the margins in Pennsylvania or Michigan. Democrats keep reaching for Texas and Florida, then falling short, which bumps up their gross total without yielding any electoral benefit.
But neither party seems enthusiastic about ending the EC. Despite a Trump delegate coup in Georgia and a J6 riot at the capital threatening the legal transfer of power, Dems seem blaise about amending the constitution or even tilting the deck back in their favor with DC statehood.
Hilarious to me that all the media spent time rehabbing Bush’s image and he can’t even manage to match Dick fucking Cheney?
Cheney is pissed at his daughter losing her family-guaranteed sinecure in Wyoming to a Trumpie, because he’s invested in his family’s political legacy.
Bush has no real beef with the Trumps and isn’t trying to give his daughters a leg up into the next administration.
Totally different set of political incentives to endorse.
Second worst president ever.
He’s considered a war criminal in most countries outside of North America and Europe.
Still waiting to see W, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz convicted of war crimes for all the torture they oversaw at those cia black sites, among other things. Absolutely villainous.
Bush and Cheney basically fabricated the entire Iraq War and the only people to come out on top were Exxon Fucking Mobil who took majority control of the Iraqi oilfields, and then the executive in charge of the operation, Rex Tillerson, got appointed to the Trump admin.
Thousands dead for greed. America’s hands stained in blood and grease for generations.
Still only second worst tho, no disagreement on that.
Bush and Cheney basically fabricated the entire Iraq War and the only people to come out on top were Exxon Fucking Mobil
Be fair. Halliburton did pretty well for themselves as well.
Wow, Rumsfeld died three years ago - I hadn’t heard that. Death at age 88 is almost infant mortality for a war criminal Republican. Count Dracula-Wolfowitz is still going strong, however.
I mean, who’s surprised by this? Dubya was always a dumbass, and essentially the beta version of Trump.
W was always a tool, a blank slate for his owners to use. The guy has no thoughts of his own so I’m not surprised.
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Dubya was actually quite intelligent, just a shit speaker and an asshole.
Not sure he was even a shit speaker if we compare him to Trump. His sentences at least made sense. I’m sure he just wants to be done with it all. He retired from office 15 years ago, and he lives in Texas I thought. If he endorses Harris, Trumpees will lash out at him. We can call that cowardly to not speak out do to fear of retribution but he is 78 years old. 78 year olds shouldnt be key factors in planning for our futures, they should be relaxing and planning their next health care visits that we have figured out a way they can access. The average male in the U.S. dies at 74. Let the old man paint a few more pictures on canvas if so chooses and pass in his time. That said… Wish Trump would do the same.
The question we should be asking is: is our children learning?
Edit: apparently some missed that this is a literal quote from Dubya.
People keep repeating that, where was this intelligence when he was president?
And on that note, what actions have ever displayed this “quite intelligent” side?
George Lakoff is on record saying he heard him give a speech displaying masterful rhetoric. Then he lost an election to a “bubba”, and vowed, quote, “I’m never gonna get out-bubba’d again”.
W was an actual Yale graduate and if you look at clips from his governorship of Texas you will see a person who could speak coherently in complete sentences and everything. Republicans have long targeted people with a fifth-grade level of comprehension and fake being that stupid. Trump’s only real innovation is targeting people with a third-grade level of comprehension.
That doesn’t really provide evidence of him being smart. Which goes back to my point, there isn’t enough actual examples out there of him being smart. Being able to talk just means you’re not very stupid, smart is a higher bar.
I’m not saying he was any sort of genius, just that he wasn’t the country bumpkin he was pretending to be.
Well my original comment was about people saying he is smart. Not being dumb doesn’t not automatically mean you’re intelligent.
No one is saying he is actually stupid, but I’m calling BS on him being “smart” given how there actually has never been any evidence of that.
He was a fighter jet pilot in the National guard. You have to be at least above average intelligence to be left alone to fly one of those things no matter who your connections are. The folksy dumb guy was mostly just an act. No doubt Cheney was the evil genius behind the administration but George was right in there and aware of what was going on.
Lol wrong.
The poster did say he was an asshole. Bush was elected to be the governor Texas and held onto the presidency - he wasn’t a dumbass.
Why did anyone ever think he was any good? The folksy paintings? The aw-shucks friendship with Michelle Obama?
This dipshit has the blood of millions on his hands. He gave us Alito. He destroyed as much of the administrative state as he could. His CIA daddy stole his election.
Can you imagine our world today if Gore had gotten in?
Fuck Cheney too, he only cares because Trump was mean to his shithead daughter.
Can you imagine our world today if Gore had gotten in?
It’s not very well-remembered today that Clinton’s administration ended with a budget surplus of hundreds of billions of dollars or that Gore was by far the most prominent voice in the world sounding the alarm about global warming. With a Gore victory we could have been debt-free as a nation by now and actually taking significant steps towards ending our dependency on fossil fuels; instead the debt is $35 fucking trillion dollars (which is so enormous it sounds like a joke) and the only reason this isn’t a bigger problem is that we’re cooking ourselves off the planet anyway and no amount of debt is going to matter.
Somewhat tangential, but “global warming” was always a weak formulation of the problem and “climate change” even more so. I prefer “anthropogenic runaway global heating” which more accurately frames the actual problem and has the handy acronym ARGH.
Never forget, the election was literally stolen from Gore. The electoral equivalent of the OJ Simpson trial.
Bushes are morally bankrupt anyways. Two war criminals and one of them, Laura, killed her friend in a car accident where she ran a stop sign.
I wonder if this is because W benefitted from the same ratfuckery that Trump uses (Roger Stone, Brooks Bros Riot, etc.)
Choose a side you fucking coward, Bush.
I’ve never seen a Bush miss an opportunity to be on the wrong side of history.
He wants Republicans policies but not Trump. He’s stuck like a lot of other people. Unfortunately, most of those people will hold their noses and vote for Trump and hope for the best. That’s the two-party system for ya.
His nephew is still in politics and he thinks speaking out will hurt his nephew’s political career.
Take his word for it. He chose one.
Trump is the only chance gwb has of someone else having more war crimes than him; making him look less evil.
These are Republicans, they only ever serve their own best interests.
Now watch that drive
Lol. Why are we still pretending to give a shit about W?
Him being informed of WTC attack did make a hell of a meme template. Maybe that.
Touché salesman. Touché.
Its Bush, that war criminal can go to hell
Yep, but it would be nice if he took Trump with him.
straight to hell
Centrists are so disappointed that senpai didn’t notice them.
Oh, now everyone is surprised when he acts like a piece of shit? My good friend growing up died in Iraq in 2008. For what?
