Elections

‘Holy Sh*t, Did He Just Say That?’: George W. Shreds Ted Cruz

Christian Datoc Senior White House Correspondent
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UPDATE (3:35 pm, EST): The Cruz campaign reached out to TheDC requesting the following update and gave Sen. Cruz’s response to the comments: 

Though Bush was critical of his former employee, another donor told Politico that “he thought Cruz was going to be a pretty formidable candidate against Jeb, especially in Texas and across the South.”

CRUZ: “I have great respect for George W Bush, and was proud to work on his 2000 campaign and in his administration. It’s no surprise that President Bush is supporting his brother and attacking the candidates he believes pose a threat to his campaign. I have no intention of reciprocating. I met my wife Heidi working on his campaign, and so I will always be grateful to him.”

George W. Bush is not a [crscore]Ted Cruz[/crscore] fan.

At a Sunday campaign stop for brother — and 2016 Republican candidate — Jeb, the former president reportedly told donors that he “just [doesn’t] like the guy.”

“The tenor of what he said about the other candidates was really pretty pleasant,” a source told Politico, “until he got to Cruz.”

“I was like, ‘Holy sh-t, did he just say that?'” added another donor. “I remember looking around and seeing that other people were also looking around surprised.”

W. Bush has apparently taken an issue with Cruz’s quasi-alliance with front-runner Donald Trump, saying “that Cruz was sucking up to Trump and just expecting all of his support to come to him in the end… He’s frustrated to have watched Cruz basically hijack the Republican Party of Texas and the Republican Party in Washington.”

Still, the elder Bush remained confident that Jeb would eventually win the nomination and told donors all night that Jeb’s “more inclusive tone on immigration would make him the party’s best hope of drawing Hispanic voters back to the Republican Party.”

“There’s a lot of people in this country who speak broken English,” Bush said before pausing. “Well, I’m one of them.”

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