Former President Donald Trump on Monday pushed back on a 9/11 warning issued by fellow Republican and former Commander in Chief George W. Bush — trashing both the Bush message and his White House tenure.
“The World Trade Center came down during his watch,” Trump said in a statement. “Bush led a failed and uninspiring presidency. He shouldn’t be lecturing anybody!”
The slam came in response to the Saturday speech by Bush in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, on Saturday, the 20th anniversary of the al-Qaida terror attack on the United States.
“There is little cultural overlap between violent extremists abroad and violent extremists at home,” Bush said. “But in their disdain for pluralism, in their disregard for human life, in their determination to defile national symbols, they are children of the same foul spirit. And it is our continuing duty to confront them.”
The speech marked some of Bush’s sharpest criticism of the Jan. 6 Capitol attack — and appeared to target Trump’s politics as well.
“So much of our politics has become a naked appeal to anger, fear, and resentment,” Bush lamented.
“On America’s day of trial and grief, I saw millions of people instinctively grab for a neighbor’s hand and rally to the cause of one another,” Bush said. “That is the America I know.”
In Trump’s rejoinder, he states it’s “so interesting to watch former President Bush, who is responsible for getting us into the quicksand of the Middle East (and then not winning!), as he lectures us that terrorists on the ‘right’ are a bigger problem than those from foreign countries that hate America, and that are pouring into our Country right now.
“If that is so, why was he willing to spend trillons of dollars and be responsible for the death of perhaps millions of people? He shouldn’t be lecturing us about anything.
“Bush led a failed and uninspiring presidency. He shouldn’t be lecturing anybody!”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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