Former President George W. Bush is a little disheartened by the state of the country under President Donald Trump, but the former President said he is still “optimistic” about the future of the United States.
“I’m optimistic about where we’ll end up. I mean, yes, I don’t like the racism, I don’t like the name-calling, and I don’t like the people feeling alienated. Nobody likes that,” Bush told People Magazine about the state of the U.S. in an interview published late Monday. “On the other hand, we’ve been through these periods before and we’ve always had a way to come out of it. I’m more optimistic than some.”
His comments come after a Monday morning interview on NBC’s “Today,” during which he addressed Trump’s executive order temporarily barring travel from seven predominantly Muslim countries.
“I think it’s very important for all of us to recognize one of our great strengths is for people to be able to worship the way they want to, or not worship at all,” Bush told NBC’s Matt Lauer when asked about the order. “The bedrock of our freedom – a bedrock of our freedom – is the right to worship freely. I understood right off the bat, Matt, that this was an ideological conflict, and people who murder the innocent are not religions people. They want to advance an ideology, and we have faced those kinds of ideologues in the past.”
