Trump says Barbara Bush should be 'nasty' to him: 'Look what I did to her son’
President Donald Trump has clapped back at the late former First Lady Barbara Bush over her newly revealed insults. He said that the deceased matriarch was just upset because he was able to defeat her son Jeb Bush.
In an interview with the Washington Times in the Oval Office on April 4, Trump said: "I have heard that she was nasty to me, but she should be. Look what I did to her son."
Bush's snarky remarks about Trump, which was recently revealed in a biography that published a part of Bush's diaries that date back to 1990s, show that she wrote how greedy, selfish and ugly Trump is.
She wrote: "Trump now means greed, selfishness and ugly. So sad." Referring to the 2016 Republican presidential primary, Trump told the publication: "Look, she's the mother of somebody that I competed against. Most people thought [Jeb Bush] was going to win and he was quickly out."
Jeb Bush got stuck with the nickname "low energy" which Trump gave. Jeb Bush was the one who became a meme for pleading "please clap" when he had a silent audience at a town hall in New Hampshire.
Trump said: "I hit him very hard in South Carolina. Remember? He was supposed to win South Carolina and I won it in a landslide. I hit him so hard."
He continued: "That's when his brother came to make the first speech for him. And I said, 'What took you so long?'."
The matriarch had referred to Trump in one of her diary entries as "the real symbol of greed in the 80s".
Bush was 92 years old when she died last April but not before giving Susan Page, the author of "The Matriarch: Barbara Bush and the Making of an American Dynasty", access to multiple volumes of her diaries, which she had been keeping since 1948. The former first lady recalls in an entry in January 1990 about reading a news article on Trump at a Los Angeles charity awards dinner for Merv Griffin.
The gala was also attended by former president Ronald Reagan and his wife Nancy, and Trump had reportedly needled Reagan over the speeches he had given in Japan. Bush later showed a friend of hers the news clips about Trump's separation from first wife, Ivana, and even noted that her allies were saying that a $25 million settlement in the prenuptial agreement that she signed wouldn't be enough.
Bush wrote in her diary: "The Trumps are a new word, both of them. Trump now means Greed, selfishness and ugly. So sad." When election night came around in 2016, the matriarch had prepared a letter for Bill Clinton to welcome him as a First Husband. However, the morning after the election, Bush woke up and "discovered to my horror that Trump had won".