Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush knows exactly what he would do if he had the opportunity to confront a baby Adolf Hitler: murder him.
Asked by Huffington Post reporters if he would be willing to kill the child who eventually grew up to orchestrate the Holocaust, Bush replied, “Hell yeah, I would! You gotta step up, man.”
This moral quandary was first posed in an October New York Times magazine poll that went viral. While responses were divided, a majority of readers—some 42 percent—agreed that they, too, would kill baby Hitler.
The uncertain outcome of rewriting a transformative moment in world history didn’t faze Bush, who said he would off the German leader even if he happened to be a particularly cute kid.
“It could have a dangerous effect on everything else, but I’d do it—I mean, Hitler,” Bush told the Huffington Post.
He later doubled down on his proposal, responding “gotta do it” to one of the reporter’s tweets about the story.
Gotta do it. https://t.co/xS3WwQDc1F
— Jeb Bush (@JebBush) November 9, 2015
The GOP candidate, who has languished behind Donald Trump and Ben Carson in the polls, has responded to criticism of his “low-energy” campaign by amping up his macho rhetoric.
Last week, he told reporters in Iowa, “I eat nails when I wake up, then I have breakfast.”
