“Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh in 2013 asserted that it’s a ‘traditional exercise’ of presidential power to ignore laws the White House views as unconstitutional, as he defended the controversial practice of signing statements prevalent in George W. Bush’s White House,” CNN reports.
Wrote Kavanaugh: “If the President has a constitutional objection to a statutory mandate or prohibition, the President may decline to follow the law unless and until a final Court order dictates otherwise.”
Bret Stephens: “George H.W. Bush once vomited on the prime minister of Japan. It was a mortifying but innocent incident, the result of a nasty stomach bug. Donald Trump has spent the last couple of days effectively doing likewise on France’s Emmanuel Macron.”
“What’s Trump’s excuse?”
“The contrast between the 41st and 45th presidents comes to mind this week as millions of Americans mourn the passing of Barbara Bush and pray for the health of her bereaved husband. It’s a study in American decline.”
Former President George H.W. Bush was admitted to the hospital on Sunday — the day after his wife, Barbara’s, funeral — “after contracting an infection that spread to his blood,” the Washington Post reports.
Trump ally Roger Stone has doubled down on his criticism of Barbara Bush after calling the former first lady “a nasty drunk” following news she had died Tuesday at the age of 92, the Washington Examiner reports.
Said Stone: “She is descending into hell right now. She’s not going to heaven. She was a bad person.”
“I’ll never beat that record.”
— President Trump, quoted by The Hill, noting that former President George H.W. Bush and Barbara Bush were married for 73 years.
Former First Lady of the United States Barbara Bush has died, according to CBS News.
She was 92 years old.
NBC News: “Former First Lady Barbara Bush will not seek additional medical treatment after a series of recent hospitalizations… In a statement, the spokesman said Bush, 92, would instead focus on ‘comfort care’ after consulting with doctors and family members.”
“It wasn’t immediately clear what Bush, the wife of former President George H.W. Bush and mother of former President George W. Bush, had been hospitalized for.”
President Trump pardoned “Scooter” Libby, former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, who was convicted of obstruction of justice and perjury, the Washington Post reports.
“Libby was sentenced to 30 months in prison and was fined $250,000. His sentence was commuted by President George W. Bush. Although Libby was spared jail time, he was not pardoned.”
President Trump is poised to pardon Scooter Libby, the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, ABC News reports.
“The move would mark another controversial pardon for Trump and could raise questions as an increasing number of the president’s political allies have landed themselves in legal jeopardy. The White House has repeatedly said that no pardons are currently on the table for people caught up in the Russia investigation.”
“If they squint hard enough, Republicans looking at President Trump can almost see George W. Bush,” the New York Times reports.
“Government spending and the debt are soaring, provoking grumblings about fiscal recklessness. Taxes were slashed at the expense of balanced budgets. Thousands of additional troops have been deployed into war zones half a world away. And with the exception of some highly specific tariffs, international trade remains free and unfettered.”
“For all the ways Mr. Trump has defied and flouted the norms of his office, many policies that he has approved are downright ordinary by the standards of modern Republican administrations.”
“The fact that there was any doubt in anyone’s mind about who the president was blows my mind.”
— Former President George W. Bush, quoted by Politico, adding that Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld “didn’t make one fucking decision.”
Associated Press: “The Bush influence has only grown stronger recently, as Trump nominated Alex Azar to lead the Health and Human Services Department, where he served under the Bush administration, and tapped Jerome ‘Jay’ Powell to be chairman of the Federal Reserve. Powell served in the Treasury Department under President George H.W. Bush.”
“The Bush alums in the administration include Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, who served as Bush’s labor secretary, and Dina Powell, a deputy national security adviser who oversaw White House personnel and later served in Bush’s State Department under Condoleezza Rice. Even the president’s schedule and day-to-day operations are overseen by a former member of Bush’s inner circle: Joe Hagin, who served as deputy White House chief of staff.”
“Roslyn Corrigan was sixteen years old when she got a chance to meet George H.W. Bush, excited to be introduced to a former president having grown up dreaming of going into politics,” Time reports.
“But Corrigan was crushed by her encounter: Bush, then 79 years old, groped her buttocks at a November 2003 event in The Woodlands, Texas, office of the Central Intelligence Agency where Corrigan’s father gathered with fellow intelligence officers and family members to meet Bush, Corrigan said. Corrigan is the sixth woman since Oct. 24 to accuse Bush publicly of grabbing her buttocks without consent.”
Former President George H.W. Bush issued an apology after an actress accused him of sexually assaulting her during a photo op four years ago, The Hill reports.
Stephen Bannon said there “has not been a more destructive presidency than George Bush’s,” while arguing that Bush “embarrassed himself” with a “high falutin” speech which criticized President Trump, CNN reports.
He added that Bush “has no earthly idea of whether he’s coming or going… just like it was when he was president.”
Brian Beutler: “Trump is a uniquely dangerous and unfit president in many ways, but he tempts liberals to paint the Republican leaders who preceded him in an afterglow of decency and high-mindedness that is hard to detect if you go searching for it in the recent past.”
“Through a process of both forgetting and cohort replacement, the unremitting awfulness of the George W. Bush presidency—particularly its early years—has been rewritten in a faction of the liberal imagination as a kind of golden age when political debate was more honest and fact-driven. Things are in some ways worse now, but if that era ever existed, it predated George W. Bush by many years.”
Coming next month: Bush and Cheney: How They Ruined America and the World by David Ray Griffin.
“Did we ever think we would see the day when we would say, ‘Please bring back George W. Bush?’ We really did work together.”
— House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), quoted by the Texas Tribune.
Taegan Goddard
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire -- which for more than two decades has been one of the nation's most influential political news sites.
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