Bush believes Russia meddled in 2016 election
Former President George W. Bush said he believes Russia meddled in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, departing from President Donald Trump who has been skeptical of intelligence agencies’ findings that the Kremlin had interfered to help him win.
“There’s pretty clear evidence that the Russians meddled. Whether they affected the outcome is another question,” the 41st president said at a summit in Abu Dhabi on Thursday. He added: “It’s problematic that a foreign nation is involved in our election system. Our democracy is only as good as people trust the results.”
Bush has been critical of Russia, slamming it for working to “exploit our country’s divisions.”
“The Russian government has made a project of turning Americans against each other,” Bush said during a forum in New York in October.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment on Bush’s remarks.
Trump has repeatedly denied collusion between his campaign and Russia and dismissed the conclusions of U.S. intelligence officials that the Kremlin had interfered in the presidential election. But Trump has not been consistent in his statements. As president-elect, he conceded for the first time last year that Russia had carried out cyberattacks against the Democratic Party during the election but denied that it was intended to help him win.
Bush also departed from Trump’s hard-line policies on immigration, saying some immigrants are “willing to do jobs that Americans won’t do.”
“Americans don’t want to pick cotton at 105 degrees, but there are people who want [to] put food on their family’s tables and are willing to do that. We ought to say thank you and welcome,” Bush said.
He also criticized Trump’s decision to end an Obamaera program that allowed undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children to remain in the country and advocated for a permanent fix to keep them.
“America is their home,” Bush said, referring to recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, commonly known as “Dreamers.”