While Dick Cheney has endorsed Harris, there have been no comments from other senior Republicans from Bush’s era

The MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell this week hit out at George W Bush, the Republican former president, for refusing to weigh in on America’s looming presidential election.

“All any decent person wants him to do is to say, ‘Don’t vote for Donald Trump, and here’s why,’ and he won’t even do that,” O’Donnell told the Fast Politics podcast, of the Republican president who was in office from 2001 to 2009.

Increasingly, Bush – and some other top Republicans from his political era – are looking lonely in their ongoing refusal to take a side in an election in which many have warned that US democracy is under threat from Trump’s open sympathies with autocracy.


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  • DarkCloud@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    I mean, Bush and Trump are in direct competition for worst presidents in living memory.

    …and they both kinda jimmy with elections. They have a lot in common really so it makes sense he’ll be averse to calling out someone whose not that dissimilar to himself.

    Also Bush has a generational bonding to the GOP, so there’s probably some level of moral compromise in that.

    • oxjox@lemmy.ml
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      2 months ago

      Depends on what “recent” memory is for you. I’ve got Reagan and Trump neck-and-neck. While Bush should be tried for war crimes, he’s nowhere close to as bad as Trump. I’d put Bush and Clinton in the cage match.

  • 5h17h34d@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Second worst president ever.

    He’s considered a war criminal in most countries outside of North America and Europe.

    • crusa187@lemmy.ml
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      2 months ago

      Still waiting to see W, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz convicted of war crimes for all the torture they oversaw at those cia black sites, among other things. Absolutely villainous.

      • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        Bush and Cheney basically fabricated the entire Iraq War and the only people to come out on top were Exxon Fucking Mobil who took majority control of the Iraqi oilfields, and then the executive in charge of the operation, Rex Tillerson, got appointed to the Trump admin.

        Thousands dead for greed. America’s hands stained in blood and grease for generations.

        Still only second worst tho, no disagreement on that.

        • Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          Bush and Cheney basically fabricated the entire Iraq War and the only people to come out on top were Exxon Fucking Mobil

          Be fair. Halliburton did pretty well for themselves as well.

      • ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        Wow, Rumsfeld died three years ago - I hadn’t heard that. Death at age 88 is almost infant mortality for a war criminal Republican. Count Dracula-Wolfowitz is still going strong, however.

  • kescusay@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    I mean, who’s surprised by this? Dubya was always a dumbass, and essentially the beta version of Trump.

    • TammyTobacco@lemmy.ml
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      2 months ago

      W was always a tool, a blank slate for his owners to use. The guy has no thoughts of his own so I’m not surprised.

      • the post of tom joad@sh.itjust.works
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        2 months ago

        He may not have been a genius mastermind but he’s smart enough not to be absolved of the evils he committed. Blank slate is a juuuuust a bit too far for me

        Just saying

    • 474D@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Dubya was actually quite intelligent, just a shit speaker and an asshole.

      • LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        Not sure he was even a shit speaker if we compare him to Trump. His sentences at least made sense. I’m sure he just wants to be done with it all. He retired from office 15 years ago, and he lives in Texas I thought. If he endorses Harris, Trumpees will lash out at him. We can call that cowardly to not speak out do to fear of retribution but he is 78 years old. 78 year olds shouldnt be key factors in planning for our futures, they should be relaxing and planning their next health care visits that we have figured out a way they can access. The average male in the U.S. dies at 74. Let the old man paint a few more pictures on canvas if so chooses and pass in his time. That said… Wish Trump would do the same.

        • ayyy@sh.itjust.works
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          2 months ago

          The question we should be asking is: is our children learning?

          Edit: apparently some missed that this is a literal quote from Dubya.

      • Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works
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        2 months ago

        People keep repeating that, where was this intelligence when he was president?

        And on that note, what actions have ever displayed this “quite intelligent” side?

        • JaggedRobotPubes@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          George Lakoff is on record saying he heard him give a speech displaying masterful rhetoric. Then he lost an election to a “bubba”, and vowed, quote, “I’m never gonna get out-bubba’d again”.

        • ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          W was an actual Yale graduate and if you look at clips from his governorship of Texas you will see a person who could speak coherently in complete sentences and everything. Republicans have long targeted people with a fifth-grade level of comprehension and fake being that stupid. Trump’s only real innovation is targeting people with a third-grade level of comprehension.

          • Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works
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            2 months ago

            That doesn’t really provide evidence of him being smart. Which goes back to my point, there isn’t enough actual examples out there of him being smart. Being able to talk just means you’re not very stupid, smart is a higher bar.

              • Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works
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                2 months ago

                Well my original comment was about people saying he is smart. Not being dumb doesn’t not automatically mean you’re intelligent.

                No one is saying he is actually stupid, but I’m calling BS on him being “smart” given how there actually has never been any evidence of that.

        • xmunk@sh.itjust.works
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          2 months ago

          The poster did say he was an asshole. Bush was elected to be the governor Texas and held onto the presidency - he wasn’t a dumbass.

  • NoSpiritAnimal@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Why did anyone ever think he was any good? The folksy paintings? The aw-shucks friendship with Michelle Obama?

    This dipshit has the blood of millions on his hands. He gave us Alito. He destroyed as much of the administrative state as he could. His CIA daddy stole his election.

    Can you imagine our world today if Gore had gotten in?

    Fuck Cheney too, he only cares because Trump was mean to his shithead daughter.

    • ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Can you imagine our world today if Gore had gotten in?

      It’s not very well-remembered today that Clinton’s administration ended with a budget surplus of hundreds of billions of dollars or that Gore was by far the most prominent voice in the world sounding the alarm about global warming. With a Gore victory we could have been debt-free as a nation by now and actually taking significant steps towards ending our dependency on fossil fuels; instead the debt is $35 fucking trillion dollars (which is so enormous it sounds like a joke) and the only reason this isn’t a bigger problem is that we’re cooking ourselves off the planet anyway and no amount of debt is going to matter.

      Somewhat tangential, but “global warming” was always a weak formulation of the problem and “climate change” even more so. I prefer “anthropogenic runaway global heating” which more accurately frames the actual problem and has the handy acronym ARGH.

  • NegativeInf@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Bushes are morally bankrupt anyways. Two war criminals and one of them, Laura, killed her friend in a car accident where she ran a stop sign.

  • Thrillhouse@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    I wonder if this is because W benefitted from the same ratfuckery that Trump uses (Roger Stone, Brooks Bros Riot, etc.)

  • NineMileTower@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Oh, now everyone is surprised when he acts like a piece of shit? My good friend growing up died in Iraq in 2008. For what?

  • SassyRamen@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    He’s a war criminal at large who is running from the Hague, he’s obviously going to be on the bad guys side.

  • norimee@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    That would be his chance to do something decent for once.

    Reminds me of when Pink wrote a song for him Dear Mr. President and we thought he is the worst that can happen…
    “How do you sleep while the rest of us cry?”