When CNN’s Jake Tapper asked Jeb Bush during Wednesday night’s debate if the massive campaign war chest he’d amassed made him a “puppet” to the special interests and wealthy donors backing his campaign, he was ready to turn that question around on his chief adversary.
“The one guy that hits on special interests that I know of, that tried to get me to change my views on something, that was generous and gave me money, was Donald Trump,” Bush said. “He wanted casino gambling in Florida.”
“I didn’t want — totally false,” Trump, standing just feet to his left, shot back immediately.
“Yes you did,” Bush hit back, stunned and clearly angry. “You wanted it. And I was opposed to casino gambling before, during, and after!”
“I promise, if I wanted it, I would’ve gotten it,” Trump said. “I know my people.”
Round two kicked off just two minutes later. “He supports Pelosi, he supports Schumer, he supports Clinton,” Bush said, pointing at Trump. “When he asked Florida to have casino gambling, we said no.”
“Wrong,” Trump brayed. “Don’t make things up, Jeb. Don’t make things up.”
#share#Trump appears to be the one making things up in this case. A report published by CNN earlier this month calls Bush, “the man who killed Trump’s casino dreams.” When Bush was running for governor of Florida in the late 1998, Trump held a $500 per head fundraiser for the gubernatorial candidate at Trump Tower and donated $50,000 to the Florida Republican Party.
Trump has often spoken directly about his past use of donations to influence powerful politicians to act in favor of his business interests. “I give to everybody,” he said during last month’s debate. “When they call, I give. And you know what? When I need something from them two years later, three years later, I call them. They are there for me. That’s a broken system.”
#related#A Bush aide told CNN that Trump never personally lobbied Bush to change casino gambling laws. But a Bloomberg investigation of the court battle between Trump and a former protégé, published in 2005, demonstrates that Trump did pursue a Florida casino project, and he did abandon it in the face of opposition from Governor Bush after he took office in 1999.
“When Florida Governor Jeb Bush nixed the idea, ‘Trump directed that the effort be terminated entirely,’” read court filings from Richard Fields, Trump’s former business partner. In that court battle, Trump never disputed that he’d pushed for a casino gambling venture. He took issue with the claim that he’d given Fields the green light to pursue it independently.
“Governor Bush made it clear to everyone that he was not interested in having casinos in the state of Florida,” Doug Guetzloe, a Florida political operative who worked for another casino company in the 1990s, told CNN. “The word definitely went through.”
— Brendan Bordelon is a political reporter for National Review.