Donald Trump has said a lot of crazy shit during this campaign. He has made his anti-immigrant stance clear, and has voiced his opinion that Mexicans are rapists, and that Muslim refugees should not be permitted into the country. He promised to build a wall along the Mexican-American border, and that Mexico would foot the bill. And he has said some other stuff that raises quite a few eyebrows.
Many Republicans dismissed the billionaire presidential candidate, but appeared fearful to take him on directly.
But now, finally, Donald Trump finally said something that just irked the other Republican presidential candidates a bit too much.
What did he say?
He criticized former President George W. Bush for a pointless war with false justifications for it, and which proved to be costly in every sense for Americans.
That is actually a sensible argument, and consistent with Trump's views on he war from 12 years ago, as I specifically remember him criticizing Bush in 2004, and suggesting that his lying about Iraq might have cost him the election. It did not, Bush won a second term, but the point was quite clear.
Yes, Trump blasted the former president before a national television audience. More importantly, he did so before an assembled crowd of establishment Republicans, including quite a few who were standing on stage with him as presidential hopefuls. One of those, of course, is Jeb Bush, brother of the former president who led the nation to war in Iraq.
"They lied," Trump said. "They said there were weapons of mass destruction and there were none. And they knew there were none. There were no weapons of mass destruction."
This set Jeb Bush on an angry tirade, responding that "while Donald Trump was building a reality TV show, my brother was building a security apparatus to keep us safe. And I'm proud of what he did."
Trump did not back down, however. In fact, he raised the stakes quite a bit.
"The World Trade Center came down during your brother's reign. Remember that?"
That is when Marco Rubio chimed in, suggesting that he, for one, was very glad that George W. Bush and not Al Gore had been president on 9/11, and then added:
"The World Trade Center came down because Bill Clinton didn’t kill Osama bin Laden when he had the chance to kill him."
That's right. Blame it on Clinton. Blame it on the Democrats, and conveniently forget that Bush had been in office for eight months, or roughly 1/6th of his presidency by that time. Well into his presidency, in other words. And he and his administration had ignored quite specific warnings about impending attacks.
And finally, the other Republican candidates united to attack Trump after what seemed like the last straw crazy attack.
The only thing is that this particular attack made a lot of sense. It just happens not to be a popular sentiment for Republicans, or one that they have any tolerance for. And being exposed by someone within their own ranks (well, sort of) is simply too much for them. Admitting that George W. Bush might be at fault at all for the nation's worst internal security failure since at least Pearl Harbor, and that his follow up invasion of Iraq was less than 100% justified, was simply too much for them to accept.
And so Trump was loudly booed and jeered, and other Republicans jumped to the defense of the former president.
Funny thing, though, is that what Trump did was actually quite on target. He simply reminded people who needed a refresher just how awful a president George W. Bush was. This was the man who ignored warnings of what wound up being one of the worst attacks in American history, and who invaded the wrong country under false pretenses - while fighting another costly war! All of this added tremendously to the national debt, as did the numerous corporate scandals and the very costly tax cuts to the very wealthy and corporations. At the end of his presidency, he nearly drove the economy to the ground with what is now known as the Great Recession. His human rights record was pitiful, as he tried to redefine torture and opened up concentration camps off American shores. He even failed in his handling of Hurricane Katrina.
Not a great track record, and surely not what Republicans want to hear when they are trying to convince Americans of how bad President Obama is, even though he actually did a decent job of fixing many of the problems that George W. Bush created to begin with!
Republicans certainly do not want Americans to be reminded of just how disastrous their last president was - bad enough to be justifiably considered by many as the worst president in history!
And so this was their stand against Trump, who finally actually said something that made sense. As it turns out, that is when other Republicans felt that Trump simply had gone too far, and decided to finally go on the attack!
Go figure!
Donald Trump finally went too far for Republicans Updated by Matthew Yglesias on February 14, 2016:
Why Donald Trump's vicious attack on George W. Bush was so brutally effective — and brilliant James Poulos on February 14, 2016:
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