During Sunday’s broadcast of CNN’s State Of The Union, host Jack Trapper interviewed former Florida governor, Jed Bush, who is one of the Republican presidential candidates and brother of former President George W. Bush. Recently, Jeb Bush has been on the defensive with the media, claiming that his brother was not responsible for the worst terrorist attacks committed on American soil on September 11, 2001; he had publicly stated that his brother “kept us safe.” Shortly before the political show interview, fellow Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump tweeted the following rebuttal to Bush’s claims: “No @JebBush, you’re pathetic for saying nothing happened during your brother’s term when the World Trade Center was attacked and came down.”
Tapper then allowed Jeb Bush to respond to Trump’s tweet. Bush criticized Trump for not being serious enough to be the next President of the United States and continue to defend his brother. Tapper quickly noted Bush’s loyalty toward his brother. Bush also alluded to “a desperate need” for sound foreign policy, reiterating his past criticism of Democratic presidential candidate who was former Secretary of State under the current administration, Hillary Clinton, and her handling of the Benghazi attacks in Libya.
Once Jeb Bush finished defending his brother, Trapper asked Bush,
“Obviously Al Qaeda was responsible for the terrorist attacks of 9/11, but how do you respond to critics who ask, if your brother and his administration bear no responsibility at all, how do you then make the jump that President Obama and Secretary Clinton are responsible for what happened at Benghazi?”
On airtime, this left Jeb Bush literally speechless for a few seconds before he replied in stutter:
“Well I – the question on Benghazi which, is hopefully we’ll now finally get the truth to,, is was the place secure? They had a responsibility, the Department of State, to have proper security. There were calls for security, it looks like they didn’t get it. And how was the response in the aftermath of the attack, was there a chance that these four American lives could have been saved? That’s what the investigation is about, it’s not a political issue. It’s not about the broad policy issue, is were we doing the job of protecting our embassies and our consulates and during the period, those hours after the attack started, could they have been saved?”
Realizing Bush’s response didn’t answer his question, Tapper then asked,
“Well that’s , that’s kind of proving the point of the critics I was just asking about, because you don’t want to have your brother bear responsibility for 9/11 and I understand that argument and Al Qaeda’s responsible, but why are the terrorists not the ones who are responsible for these attacks in Libya?”
Appearing incoherent, Jeb Bush ended the interview with his response,
“They are, of course they are but – of course they are, but if the ambassador was asking for additional security and didn’t get it, that’s a proper point and if it’s proven that the security was adequate compared to other embassies, fine, we’ll move on.”
Once again, Jeb Bush failed to directly respond to Tapper’s question, which was not a good look for him. As expected, Bush will continue to defend his brother’s presidential legacy, despite the well-documented fact that his brother ignored intelligence warnings of a pending attack inside of the United States by Osama bin Laden. Yet, Bush will continue to blame Clinton and the Obama administration for the Benghazi attacks, not the Islamic militants who killed the four Americans. Tapper should be praised for exposing this hypocrisy and making Jeb Bush incompetent to be in the White House in 2016.