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Donald Trump has figured out Jeb Bush's greatest weakness as a candidate -
Vox

http://www.vox.com/2015/10/18/9564267/donald-trump-jeb-bush-911

Donald Trump has figured out Jeb Bush's greatest weakness as a candidate

I don't know if Donald Trump will win the Republican nomination. But even
if he doesn't, it's increasingly clear he's going to destroy Jeb Bush
before he loses.

Over the past week, Trump and Bush have been in an argument that basically
boils down to the question of *was George W. Bush president on 9/11/2001?*

Trump insists that Bush was president both prior to and during the 9/11
attacks, and he was therefore at least partly responsible for the security
failures that permitted the tragedy. And to Trump's credit, there is
considerable
evidence
<http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2015/10/17/3713554/guide-to-whether-george-w-bush-was-president-on-911/>
that George W. Bush was president on 9/11/2001.

Jeb Bush's position is harder to parse: he argues that his brother was only
responsible for what happened *after* 9/11, suggesting, perhaps, that
someone else bore the responsibilities of the presidency on 9/11/2001. Or,
to be a bit kinder to his position, he argues that the measure of as
president isn't whether something like 9/11 happens, but whether it happens
*again*.

How pathetic for @realdonaldtrump <https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump> to
criticize the president for 9/11. We were attacked & my brother kept us
safe.
— Jeb Bush (@JebBush) 3:08 PM - 16 Oct 2015
<https://twitter.com/JebBush/status/655098096649707520>

The result is this absolutely brutal interview
<http://www.rawstory.com/2015/10/cnn-host-destroys-jeb-bush-you-blame-hillary-for-benghazi-but-insist-brother-blameless-for-911/>
CNN's Jake Tapper conducted with Bush. "If your brother and his
administration bear no responsibility at all," Tapper asks, "how do you
then make the jump that President Obama and Secretary Clinton are
responsible for what happened at Benghazi?"

Bush's response is almost physically painful to watch.

Via CNN
<http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/18/politics/donald-trump-jeb-bush-foreign-policy/>

Trump has a bully's instinct for finding someone else's true weaknesses.
His continued crack that Bush is a "low-energy" candidate is devastating
precisely because it identifies a weakness not just in Bush's campaign
style, but in the nature of his campaign
<http://www.vox.com/2015/9/4/9258037/low-energy-trump-bush>.

Now Trump has pulled Bush into an even more dangerous quagmire: his
brother's presidency. Trump is reminding every Republican voter that
nominating Jeb Bush will mean running a general election campaign with two
disadvantages. First, Republicans will have to answer for George W. Bush's
failures in a way they wouldn't if they nominated Marco Rubio or Carly
Fiorina or Donald Trump, and second, they'll need to somehow explain why
they're holding Hillary Clinton responsible for Obama's presidency even as
they don't hold George W. Bush responsible for George W. Bush's presidency.

And Trump, having realized how weak Bush is on this issue, isn't stopping.
He's moved from 9/11 to the Iraq War:

Jeb, why did your brother attack and destabalize the Middle East by
attacking Iraq when there were no weapons of mass destruction? Bad info?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) 9:29 AM - 18 Oct 2015
<https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/655737356344016896>


Eric D. Schwerin
eschwerin@rosemontseneca.com

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