Ex-President George W. Bush denounces bigotry,
Former president says country must recover its identity
NEW YORK — Former President George W. Bush on Thursday denounced bigotry in Trump-era American politics, warning that the rise of “nativism,” isolationism and conspiracy theories have clouded the nation’s true identity.
The comments, delivered at a New York City conference hosted by the George W. Bush Institute, amounted to an indirect critique from a former Republican president who has remained largely silent during President Donald Trump’s unlikely rise to power.
The 43rd president did not name Trump on Thursday, but he attacked some principles that define the 45th president’s political brand.
“We’ve seen nationalism distorted into nativism, forgotten the dynamism that immigration has always brought to America,” Bush said. “We see a fading confidence in the value of free markets and international trade, forgetting that conflict, instability and poverty follow in the wake of protectionism. We’ve seen the return of isolation sentiments, forgetting that American security is directly threatened by the chaos and despair of distant places.”
“We’ve seen our discourse degraded by casual cruelty,” he continued. “Bigotry seems emboldened. Our politics seems more vulnerable to conspiracy theories and outright fabrication.”
“We need to recall and recover our own identity,” he continued. “To renew our country, we only need to remember our values.”
Asked about the speech, Trump said he hadn’t seen it.
Bush noted Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election and declared that “the Russian government has made a project of turning Americans against each other.”
“Foreign aggressions, including cyberattacks, disinformation and financial influence, should never be downplayed or tolerated,” he said.
Trump has expressed skepticism of Russia’s involvement.
A special prosecutor is currently investigating whether Trump and his campaign associates coordinated with Moscow in the effort to sway the election.
Bush is the brother of 2016 presidential hopeful Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor belittled and ultimately vanquished by Trump during the race for the Republican nomination. He joins a slowly growing list of prominent Republicans who have publicly defied Trump.
But during the Bush event, a current Trump administration official also broke with Trump’s dismissive tone on Russian interference. Nikki Haley, Trump’s chief envoy to the United Nations, cast Russia’s efforts to influence the 2016 election as “warfare” and efforts to “sow chaos” in elections across the world.
“The Russians, God bless them, they’re saying, ‘Why are Americans anti-Russian? And why have we done the sanctions?’ Well, don’t interfere in our elections and we won’t be anti-Russian,” Haley said.