Bush Sr, Jr openly condemn Trump

WASHINGTON Former US presidents George Bush Sr and Jr have never liked Donald Trump, and now they have gone on record with their blunt assessment of him, calling him a “blowhard” who doesn’t know what it means to be president.

“I don’t like him. I don’t know much about him, but I know he’s a blowhard,” George HW Bush told historian Mark Updegrove for his upcoming book The Last Republicans, according to CNN. “And I’m not too excited about him being a leader.”

The interview took place in May 2016, while Trump was steamrolling his way through a packed field of Republican presidential hopefuls.

The historian told the network that when Trump claimed he was his own adviser, Bush Jr said, “Wow, this guy doesn’t know what it means to be president.”

Father and son had gone on to declare they would not vote for their party’s presidential nominee. Bush Sr voted for Trump’s Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, while the younger Bush left the space blank on the ballot.

Trump, who doesn’t like them either and shares a complicated relationship with all the living former presidents, will have something to say about it soon enough, given how he prides in his ability to counter-punch.

Barack Obama, who has been more directly under fire from Trump, had recently hit back by speaking of the return of “politics of division that we have seen so many times before that dates back centuries”.

Trump had recently had nice things to say about another former president, Jimmy Carter. After Carter said Trump was being given a hard time by the media, the latter thanked him by tweeting his thanks for the “nice remarks … Mr President”.