Bannon calls George W. Bush’s presidency ‘destructive’
Remarks follow ex-president’s speech rebuking Trump
Steve Bannon is no fan of former President George W. Bush.
“There has not been a more destructive presidency than George Bush’s,” Bannon said Friday night during a speech to the California Republican Party, according to CNN.
Bannon, who was forced out of his post as senior adviser to President Donald Trump this summer, was reacting to a speech Bush gave on Thursday. Bush never mentioned Trump by name, but the speech was a clear rebuke of the current president. Former President Barack Obama had a similar message during two speeches that same day.
“We’ve seen nationalism distorted into nativism,” Bush said in his speech for the Bush Institute’s Spirit of Liberty event in New York. “Bigotry seems emboldened. Our politics seems more vulnerable to conspiracy theories and outright fabrication.”
“It was clear he didn’t understand anything he was talking about,” Bannon said Friday, according to CNN. Bush “has no earthly idea of whether he’s coming or going … just like it was when he was president of the United States.”
While they are members of the same party, Bannon and Bush have little in common on policy issues. Bannon helped elect Trump on a nationalistic, anti-immigration platform while Bush advocated for a global foreign policy and was pro-immigration.
Since leaving the White House and returning to his position as executive chairman of Breitbart, Bannon has been leading an all-out war against the establishment in both parties. Bannon and his allies have signaled support for a slate of anti-establishment, pro-Trump candidates running against incumbent lawmakers in both parties.
Bannon has vowed that anyone who has criticized Trump, such as Arizona Republican Sen. Jeff Flake, should be a target in the 2018 primaries. But he also has no patience for lawmakers who haven’t denounced Trump’s critics either.