Outside the Beltway

Bush 41, 43 Won’t Be Endorsing Trump

Doug Mataconis · Thursday, May 5, 2016 · 5 comments

The only two living Republican former Presidents have no plan to endorse Donald Trump:

For the first time since his own presidency, George H.W. Bush is planning to stay silent in the race for the Oval Office — and the younger former president Bush plans to stay silent as well.

Bush 41, who enthusiastically endorsed every Republican nominee for the last five election cycles, will stay out of the campaign process this time. He does not have plans to endorse presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump, spokesman Jim McGrath told The Texas Tribune.

“At age 91, President Bush is retired from politics,” McGrath wrote in an email Wednesday. “He came out of retirement to do a few things for Jeb, but those were the exceptions that proved the rule.” His son Jeb Bush dropped out of the GOP presidential race in February.

Bush 43, meanwhile, “does not plan to participate in or comment on the presidential campaign,” according to his personal aide, Freddy Ford.

(…)

Although George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush have not critiqued Trump in so many words, they have made some veiled criticisms. At a campaign event for his brother Jeb Bush in February, Bush 43 noted that in his experience, “the strongest person in the room usually isn’t the loudest one in the room.”

And Bush 41’s silence tells its own story.

Bush 41 has endorsed, and campaigned for as much as his physical condition has allowed, every Republican nominee since he left office, including his somewhat bitter rival for the 1988 Republican nomination, Kansas Senator Bob Dole. The same has been true of George W. Bush. Given that, their absence from the campaign trail this fall will be noticeable to say the least.