The row came after Trump suggested that the former president shares blame for the 9/11 terror attacks.
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Trump’s outburst was similar to his comment last summer that Republican Senator John McCain was not a hero because he had been captured during the Vietnam War. People can blame him or not, but at the time he was the president.
Jeb Bush lashed out, calling Trump “pathetic”.
“Donald Trump is getting close to truther territory if he thinks that George Bush is the reason 9/11 happened”, he said.
“I think we are going to have a convention in which nobody has enough votes, and I think you are going to go there, I think one of the three, Carly, Donald Trump or Dr. Carson, are still going to be in”, he said.
The donations for the quarter, which included the month of August when much political activity slows for summer vacations, put Bush behind only retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson in money raised among the 15 Republicans seeking their party’s nomination for the November 2016 election.
“The World Trade Centre came down during his reign”, he said, referring to the twin towers that were brought down by Islamist militants in hijacked planes.
SuperPACs, of course, can raise unlimited amounts, meaning they can have fundraising totals many multiples higher than a candidate’s campaign itself – Jeb Bush’s superPAC, Right to Rise, raised $103 million in the first half of this year alone.
In an interview with Bloomberg earlier today, when inquiring about Trump’s ability to lead, reporter Stephanie Ruhle mentioned how “George W. Bush had to stand in front of America after 9/11”.
He has said he is supportive of his brother and father, former President George H.W. Bush, but would also be his “own man” if elected. “They don’t know that I was an effective conservative governor that disrupted the old order in Florida and made big changes”.
Mr Trump has previously called Mr Bush’s presidency a “disaster” and that the decicion to invade Afghanistan in 2001 was a “terrible mistake”. “Id watch him in interviews and Id look at people and ask, Do you think he understands the question? It’s a disaster, and it’s a disaster all over the place”, Trump said.
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Of course, coming at Trump on Twitter is a risky proposition, because he will respond, and he will be mean, and he will put a period before that @ to make sure everyone sees it. “What we need is a leader, we don’t have a leader”. “We don’t have a leader”.
