Bush Two Hits Nerves in Trump Land
with Laudatory Words for Biden Win

Mike Hailey
Capitol Inside
November 8, 2020

Former President George W. Bush knocked the steam out of President Donald Trump's modest win in the Lone Star State on Sunday when he congratulated Joe Biden for his victory last week in a general election that he thinks the Democrat won fair and square.

While Bush also commended the outgoing president and his supporters for a "hard-fought" campaign as well, the ex-Texas governor's characterization of Biden's victory speech on Saturday night as patriotic hit a major nerve in the Trump White House and base loyalists ranks.

Regardless of Bush's actual intentions with the rare statement to the public, it's bound to be interpreted on both sides of the aisle as a passive suggestion that Trump's behavior this weekend has been un-American with his refusal to accept defeat and unfounded claims on election fraud.

But the most stinging part of the Bush salute to the nation's new leader might have come when he gave the distinct impression that he sees the ousted president's legal challenges going nowhere even though he said Trump had the right to pursue them.

The second of the two Bush presidents seemed to be giving Trump some free advice when he said that he'd reached out to Biden exactly the way that he'd done when Democrat Barack Obama and the current incumbent had been elected after his departure from the White House after two terms in 2009.

"I offered him the same thing I offered Presidents Trump and Obama: my prayers for his success, and my pledge to help in any way I can," Bush said.

Bush's father - former President George H.W. Bush - had sent a handwritten note to Democrat Bill Clinton after losing to him in 1992 with a promise to be "rooting hard" for his successor in the White House to succeed for the sake of America.

The younger Bush also congratulated Vice President-elect Kamala Harris for the historic nature of the Democratic ticket's win in a general election that Trump was one of the few incumbents on either side of the aisle to lose.

Bush gave the thumbs up to Biden as an elite group of legal experts from both parties teamed up with a bevy of former presidential administration officials in a call for the General Services Administration's top leader to formally declare Biden the winner after stalling for the past two days amid Trump's electoral piracy claims.

Trump has insisted that he won the election because he had big early leads last Tuesday night in critical battleground states. The president has argued that mail-in votes were illegal because they favored Biden substantially.

But Trump fared poorly among Americans who cast their ballots in the mail because he'd done such a stellar job of convincing his supporters that postal balloting was crooked and immoral.

Trump suggested that he plans to take his complaints with or without any supporting evidence to the U.S. Supreme Court that he appears to believe will invalidate the American election and declare him to be the winner.

But Trump's support within his own camp appears to be on the verge of unraveling with senior advisors like son-in-law Jared Kusher trying to explain to the president that he lost the election and should concede.