Why Jeb Bush Is Taking a Right Hook to Donald Trump
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush fired back at Donald Trump Tuesday with a video questioning his conservative bona fides. The 80-second video hits Trump with a hard right hook, showing clips of him talking about living in New York City, calling himself pro-choice, praising single-payer health care and saying that Hillary Clinton is "a terrific woman.", "I lived in New York City and Manhattan all my life, so my views are a little bit different than if I lived in Iowa," Trump says at the beginning of the video, a clip from his 1999 appearance on "Meet the Press.", Bush and Trump have been engaged in a war of words, as the real estate mogul maintains his lead on the GOP field. Trump released a campaign video on Instagram juxtaposing Bush's assertion that people cross into the U.S. illegally as an "act of love" with photos of criminals in the country without legal status. For months, the Bush campaign has tried to ignore Trump, but it has now decided to treat him as a legitimate candidate who must be taken down. Attacking from his right flank is an attempt to both weaken the front-runner and bolster Bush's conservative bona fides. Some of the attacks draw on Trump's past statements, which he has since repudiated. While the video shows Trump saying he is "very pro-choice," he said during the August Republican debate that his views have "very much evolved" on the issue. Another line in the video draws from that debate to show Trump arguing that single-payer health care "works in Canada" and "works incredibly well in Scotland," although Trump went on to say that it "could have worked in a different age" in the United States. Trump responded Tuesday with another Instagram showing Bush praising Clinton.