GOP presidential candidate Jeb Bush suggested during a Thursday interview with MSNBC that his father might be trying to “create a different narrative” about his brother George W. Bush’s administration.
Jeb Bush was responding to critical comments made by his father, the 41st President, about the influence of former Vice President Dick Cheney and former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld regarding the war in Iraq.
Quoted in a forthcoming biography, George H.W. Bush knocked the “arrogant” Rumsfeld and “hard-line” Cheney for convincing his son that the U.S. could “use force to get our way in the Middle East.”
Jeb Bush had a different take.
“I think my dad, like a lot of people that love George, want to try to create a different narrative, perhaps,” Jeb Bush told MSNBC’s Kasie Hunt. “Just because that’s natural to do, right?”
“My brother’s a big boy,” he said. “His administration was shaped by his thinking, his reaction to the attack on 9/11.”
W. himself told his dad’s biographer that he “made the decisions” about foreign policy, recalling his infamous characterization of himself as “the decider” who determined the composition of his political cabinet. At the height of the Iraq War, Bush insisted that Rumsfeld should stay on as secretary of defense though prominent military officials called for his resignation.
Rumsfeld also fired back at the elder Bush’s comments on Thursday, telling NBC News that “Bush 41 is getting up in years and misjudges Bush 43, who I found made his own decisions.”
Watch Jeb Bush’s comments below:
