Real estate tycoon and GOP front-runner Donald Trump showed his cunning side, bating former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush to defend his brother’s, former President George W. Bush, handling of Sept. 11. Trump told CNN’s “New Day” with Chris Cumo today that Sept. 11 happened on Bush-43’s watch, refuting the conventional wisdom that Bush-43 kept the country safe during his presidency. Former CIA Director George Tenet exposed in his “2007” memoir, “Center of the Storm” that he warned Bush and VP Dick Cheney in the summer of 2001 of an imminent terrorist attack by renegade Saudi terrorist Osama bin Laden. Three weeks before Bush’s 2000 election, Bin Laden, struck the guided missile frigate U.S. Cole in the Gulf of Aden Oct. 12, 2000, killing 17 U.S. sailors. Tenet claims he desperately warned the Bush White House before Sept. 11 but no one was listening.
Trump’s Sept. 11 critique prompted an angry outburst from Jeb, trying to prove Trump wrong he was too passive to be president. “They knew an attack was coming,” said Trump. “George Tenet, the CIA Director, knew there would be an attack, and he said so to the president and said so to everybody else that would listen,” giving a less sanitized version of events leading up to Sept. 11. Trump failed to mention that the only family that flew out of the U.S. during the nationwide flight ban after Sept. 11 was the Saudi Bin Laden family who had longstanding ties with Halliburton Corp., formerly run by Cheney. Attacking Trump for daring to comment about Sept. 11, Bush hopes to restore his flagging campaign, now polling on 8%, well back in the GOP pack. Trump’s willingness to confront politically incorrect issues, especially the 9/11 tragedy, endears him to disgruntled GOP voters.
Bush’s advisors urged him to go after Trump, proving that he’s up for the fight but, more importantly, still relevant in the 2016. Attacking Trump grabs Bush headlines, making him look like he’s still a top-tier candidate, when in fact he’s not. Engaging Bush on Sept. 11 was the perfect bate for Bush, whose entire campaign has been defining him as his “own man.” Rushing to his brother’s defense reminds voters that Jeb may not use the Bush name in campaign ads but he’s very much a Bush. Jeb’s got himself in hot water answering questions on the Iraq War, reluctantly admitting, had he known then, what he knows now, he would not have gone into Iraq. Jeb’s knee-jerk answer about his brother, Bush-43, is that he kept the country safe. “If you look at what happened, number one, I would’ve had a stronger immigration policy,” said Trump, implying that less terrorists have been in the U.S.
Engaging Jeb exposed his surly side, showing the kind of awkward ire defending his brother. “My brother responded to a crisis,” Jeb told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union.” “And he did it as you would hope a president would do. He united the country, he organized our country and he kept us safe. And there’s no denying that. The great majority of Americans believe that,” said Jeb. Jeb’s passionate defense doesn’t take into account that after Bush-43 began “Operation Enduring Freedom” Oct. 7, 2001, officially starting the Afghan War, al-Qaeda’s Osama bin Laden and Taliban’s Mullah Mohammed Omar, flew the coop Dec. 14, 2001, leaving Afghansitan for good. Fourteen years later, with over 2,356 U.S. soldiers killed and over $1 trillion spent, the low-intensity war goes on. Bush-43 pivoted March 20, 2003 into a pointless war in Iraq, costing $2 trillion and 4,491 U.S. lives.
Jeb wanted to be his “own man” but finds himself fighting his brother’s old battles. When it comes to the economy, plunging the nation into the worst recession since the Great Depress, Jeb finds himself in quicksand. Trump hasn’t gone after Bush-43’s handling of the economy, something more catastrophic than engaging in wasteful foreign wars. “You can say were safe, after in a sense,” said Trump today. “But we made mistakes there—we went into Iraq, which was a disaster. Not Afghanistan, which is where we probably should’ve gone in the first place, but Iraq was a disastrous decision,” said Trump, raising the reason why voters, Republicans, Democrats and independents, don’t want another Bush presidency. Raisng Sept. 11 and the Iraq War throws down the gauntlet, forcing voters to examine some of the more egregious mistakes of the Bush-43 White House.
Jeb took Trump’s Sept. 11 bate, hook, line and sinker. While he thought he’d grab headlines, and he did, it hurt his standing in the polls, reminding voters why they don’t want another Bush presidency. Running as Jeb isn’t enough to escape his brother legacy of disastrous wars and a broken economy. Trump welcomes any day Jeb wants to defend his brother’s foreign policy and economic record. Whether Jeb admits it or not, time hasn’t yet worn off the bad memories from just seven years ago. Jeb and the GOP want to blame President Barack for the rise of ISIS and a flat economy but the facts say otherwise. Every reputable analysis shows that toppling Saddam opened up the floodgates of Islamic terrorism in the Middle East. ISIS directly emerged from ashes of Saddam’s regime. It’s hard to deny a six-year bull market, record low unemployment and a growing economy.
