Atlanta — Jeb Bush tells National Review that Donald Trump’s comment about Megyn Kelly is “inappropriate” and “hurts the Republican Party.”
“I don’t want to be associated with that kind of language,” Bush said in an interview following his remarks to RedState this afternoon. Bush was the only GOP presidential hopeful to address Trump’s comments in his remarks to attendees at the RedState Gathering here — others only spoke about them in remarks to the press. He called on Trump to apologize.
“I mean, do we want to win? Do we want to insult 53 percent of all voters? That is not how you win elections and worse yet that is not how you bring people together and solve problems, that is not the way you do it. So your decision I think was the right one,” Bush told host Erick Erickson, who disinvited Trump from the event late last night. “Mr. Trump should apologize.”
In the post-speech interview with NR, Bush said those kinds of remarks were a problem for the Republican party:
People are running for president to lead the country. And leadership isn’t about pushing people down, it’s about lifting people up, and I don’t think we can equate loudness with strength. That’s not, that’s just not how it works in life. That’s just not how it works. Leadership is about having a servant’s heart, having humility, having a strategy, working hard, understanding other people’s point of view. And while I totally appreciate people are angry and there’s angst and they like how he speaks his mind, I think there’s a limit to what you can say, and this hurts the Republican Party. Hillary Clinton’s the only one celebrating when people say the things that Donald Trump said about Megyn Kelly.
The former Florida governor also defended Kelly, calling her “probably the best journalist on television in America today. She’s certainly tough but she’s fair, and to say those things is just completely inappropriate. Period.”
He stopped short of saying Trump should drop out of the race, however.
“He has every right to run. He’s the frontrunner,” Bush said grimly. “So it’s not up to me to make that decision.”
Still, he said, Trump’s remarks were a problem for the Republican party seeking to win the White House:
Mr. Trump has a lot of good virtues for sure, [he’s an] accomplished businessman, but you can’t say things like he has said and expect that there’s a benefit for the broader effort. We need to win. A Republican, a conservative needs to become president. The only way we fix the things that are broken in America today is having conservatives be elected. And that type of language does not help. Period. Over and out. Let’s move on.