Former president Bill Clinton has defended his Republican successor George W Bush over his endorsement decision just days before Election Day.
In September, Bush’s office announced that he would not endorse GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump for a third consecutive election cycle, nor his Democratic rival Kamala Harris.
During a CNN interview on Sunday, Clinton – who has endorsed Harris and campaigned on her behalf since she stepped on the ticket in July – praised the 43rd president’s decision to remain silent in the 2024 race.
“First of all, he’s spoken up, I think, more than he’s gotten credit for, and he takes every opportunity that I’ve seen to talk about how important immigration is and how we can’t survive without it,” he told reporter Edward-Isaac Dovere from a tour bus while campaigning for Harris.
“He also knows, beginning with our relationship, it’s very different when you’re out of political life, when there is no competition, no consequence.”
Clinton believes that Bush wouldn’t want to risk alienating the party he has dedicated his life to by publicly endorsing a Democrat.
“And I think he believes that since he was a proud Republican all those years, it’s enough for him to make clear what he believes with all this, without giving up the party he’s been with all his life.”
Bush marks the only living former president to refrain from publicly throwing his support behind either of the candidates.
His daughter Barbara Bush voiced her support for the vice president last week and went canvassing for the Harris-Walz campaign. The political scion told People that she hopes Democrats will “move our country forward and protect women’s rights.”
Meanwhile, almost 240 former staffers who worked under Bush, the GOP 2012 presidential candidate Mitt Romney and late Arizona Senator John McCain have endorsed Harris and her running mate Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, according to the Washington Post.
Nicolle Wallace, White House communications director in the Bush Administration, tried unsuccessfully to lobby her former boss, urging him to have a “change of heart” and take a stand against Trump, she told MSNBC last week.
A source told CNN that “Bush has indeed moved on from presidential politics.”
But, the source added that “he has been working quietly and diligently to keep the Senate in GOP control.”
Clinton told CNN that Bush is a fan of Democratic Texas Senate hopeful Colin Allred – who marginally trails incumbent Ted Cruz in the polls – and even left a congratulatory voicemail for the Texas representative after he earned a seat in the lower chamber in 2018. “Oh, yeah. He’ll tell anybody that, that he’s a good guy,” Clinton said Bush told him.
