Last updated on July 17th, 2023 at 09:12 pm
“A Kennedy outs a Bush who favors a Clinton,” reads the Politico lede.
Rather than vote for Donald Trump, former President George H.W. Bush is voting for Hillary Clinton, according to Kathleen Hartington, who confirmed this to Politico.
Former Maryland lieutenant governor Kathleen Hartington Kennedy Townsend is the daughter of the late Robert F. Kennedy. On Monday she posted a picture of herself next to George H.W. Bush, with the status update, “The President told me he’s voting for Hillary!!†Politico later confirmed this with her in a phone interview.
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The picture has been widely shared by the media, but is not currently visible to the public on her Facebook page:
Bush spokesman Jim McGrath “did not confirm nor deny the claim,” according to CNN Tuesday morning.
Aversion to Trump style bullying and name calling isn’t new to George H. W. Bush, who resigned from the NRA on May 3, 1995 after Wayne LaPierre attacked federal agents as “jack-booted thugs”.
The former President wrote in part:
I was outraged when, even in the wake of the Oklahoma City tragedy, Mr. Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of N.R.A., defended his attack on federal agents as “jack-booted thugs.” To attack Secret Service agents or A.T.F. people or any government law enforcement people as “wearing Nazi bucket helmets and black storm trooper uniforms” wanting to “attack law abiding citizens” is a vicious slander on good people.
The Bushes have displayed disdain for Donald Trump, perhaps based on decades of “melodrama” between the parties, as the Washington Post put it.
There’s also the matter of Trump’s vicious, childish attacks on Jeb Bush, and then there is the matter of Donald Trump’s general demeanor. This is not a man who attracts people of character or people who value tradition, knowledge, civility, the three branches of government, or the hierarchy of power.
Among many establishment Republicans, Donald Trump is basically the rude, crude boor your sister brings home for Christmas and everyone tries to tolerate for a day, but turns up their noses in disgust and contempt as soon as he’s moved on to the next mark. No one expected her to marry him. And then she did.
This is significant not only because there isn’t a former president openly supporting Donald Trump, whereas Hillary Clinton has the wildly popular current President Barack Obama and her husband, former President Bill Clinton campaigning for her, but also because the Bush family is a Republican dynasty. They represent establishment Republican power.
The shift of power to the Sarah Palin wing of the Republican Party was thought to be a one-off, but here’s know-nothing, violence-inciting, Putin puppet Donald Trump eight years later.
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