The Trump-Bush wars rage on, after Jeb Bush went campaigning this week in a Latino community to launch his latest attack at the anti-immigrant Trump. The Donald’s responding salvo: Jeb was speaking Spanish when he did it.
“I like Jeb,” Trump told the right-wing Breitbart site, which has been avidly boosting his campaign. “He’s a nice man. But he should really set the example by speaking English while in the United States.”
The folks at Breitbart quoted Bush’s offending remarks — but still apparently felt the need to not sully their own tongues with the Spanish language. So instead of translating what is a very simple phrase, they attributed the English rendition to another newspaper’s account:
“El hombre no es conservador,” Bush said in Spanish of Trump in Miami, according to the Tampa Bay Times. That means, according to that newspaper, that Bush is saying of Trump: “The man is not conservative.”
Breitbart’s implicit charge of Bush’s hypocrisy rests on the idea that nobody could be a legitimate conservative themselves while speaking Spanish.
As for the merits of Bush’s criticism, Trump had a response that invoked two themes sure to impress Republican voters: Ronald Reagan and the personal greatness of Donald Trump.
“You know, Ronald Reagan wasn’t a conservative,” Trump said. “He became a great conservative. By the time I’m finished, people will say I’m a great conservative. By the time I’m finished with the presidency, after eight years of the presidency, people will say I’m a great conservative — far greater than Jeb would ever have the ability to be.”
File photo: Donald Trump and Jeb Bush at the first official Republican presidential candidates debate of the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign in Cleveland, Ohio, August 6, 2015. REUTERS/Brian Snyder