The administration of US President Donald Trump is striking back at George W. Bush and his father George H.W. Bush as the former presidents decry the commander in chief’s policies in a new book.
White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders indicated in a briefing Saturday that the two are an outcome of “decades of costly mistakes.”
"The American people voted to elect an outsider who is capable of implementing real, positive, and needed change - instead of a lifelong politician beholden to special interests,” she said in a statement to The Hill. “If they were interested in continuing decades of costly mistakes, another establishment politician more concerned with putting politics over people would have won.”
An anonymous White House source was also quoted as saying that “If one presidential candidate can disassemble a political party, it speaks volumes about how strong a legacy its past two presidents really had.”
The White House's scorched earth response to my book, "The Last Republicans"... https://t.co/XiE8xbGVVy
— Mark K. Updegrove (@MarkKUpdegrove) November 4, 2017
Penned by American author Mark K. Updegrove, “The Last Republicans,” contains quotations by the two Republican leaders, who claim they are the last GOPers.
“I don’t like him,” George H.W. Bush says of Trump in the book, which will be released November 14. “I don’t know much about him, but I know he’s a blowhard. And I’m not too excited about him being a leader.”
“I’m very comfortable that when people fully analyze my decisions in the proper context, they will understand why my foreign policy—not in the principles of US leadership but in the application—was different,” George W. Bush said in a recent speech without mentioning Trump’s name.
In March 2003, Bush invaded Iraq in a blatant violation of international law, over the Arab country’s “weapons of mass destruction,” but no such weapons were ever discovered in the country.
The invasion plunged Iraq into chaos, resulting in years of deadly violence and the rise of terrorist groups like Daesh (ISIL), while leaving more than one million Iraqis dead.
But the White House said the Bush legacy "begins with the Iraq war, one of the greatest foreign policy mistakes in American history."
“Saddam Hussein was a bad guy,” George H.W. Bush said. “I think history will be okay with it."
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The White House, meanwhile, argued that “President Trump remains focused on keeping his promises to the American people by bringing back jobs, promoting an America First foreign policy and standing up for the forgotten men and women of our great country.”
Since Trump assumed office, the US has been expanding its military presence in various spots in the world, including Afghanistan.
The New York billionaire was nominated by the Republican Party to run for the 2016 presidential election and managed to beat Democrat Hillary Clinton despite losing the popular vote.
Former US House Speaker John Boehner indicated recently that the Republican party is dead, saying, "Donald Trump’s not a Republican.”