Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush said his Republican opponent Donald Trump comes across as “an actor playing the role of a candidate for president.”
Bush said Trump doesn’t have “a broad sense of the responsibilities of what it is to be a president,” specifically criticizing Trump’s foreign policy positions, in an interview with CNN's “State of the Union” on Sunday.
The two Republican presidential hopefuls have recently gone back-and-forth about the comments Trump made about former President George W. Bush, saying “When you talk about George Bush, I mean, say what you want, the World Trade Center came down during his time.”
Trump tweeted Sunday morning, “Jeb Bush should stop trying to defend his brother and focus on his own shortcomings and how to fix them.”
He later tweeted a question to Bush, asking why his brother attacked and destabilized the Middle East “attacking Iraq when there were no weapons of mass destruction? Bad info?”
Bush defended his brother again, saying he responded to the crisis “as any president would do.” He questioned why Trump continues to bring this up, adding that his comments don’t prove he has a serious understanding of foreign policy.
“Across the spectrum of foreign policy, Mr. Trump talks about things as though he’s still on The Apprentice,” Bush said. “Literally talking about Syria saying ISIS should take out Assad and then Russia should take out ISIS as though it was some sort of board game is not a serious approach.”
In an interview with Fox News’ Chris Wallace that aired on Sunday, Trump said he is not blaming George W. Bush for 9/11, but if he were president at the time, things would have been different.
“I am extremely, extremely tough on illegal immigration,” Trump said. “I’m extremely tough on people coming into this country. I believe that if I were running things … I doubt that those people would have been in our country.”
Bush, however, said he has “grave doubts” about the possibility of Trump becoming commander-in-chief, something he did not admit in the second GOP debate. His campaign also recently released an ad suggesting that Americans should not trust Trump in that position.
“He’s not taking the responsibility — the possibility of becoming the president of the United States really seriously,” Bush said Sunday.