Former First Lady Barbara Bush became brutally honest in the last few months of her life. She told her biographer that she’d renounced the Republican Party in 2018 — because of President Donald Trump.
She also blamed Trump for her heart attack in 2016. Bush said Trump’s ridicule of her son, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, during the Republican presidential primary pushed her health over the edge.
That’s according to her new tell-all, “The Matriarch: Barbara Bush and the Making of an American Dynasty,” by author Susan Page.
Bush died in April 2018 at the age of 92.
Fox News reported that Bush renounced the Republican Party at the very end of her life.
When asked in Oct. 2017 if she was a Republican, the former first lady said she was still loyal to the party.
That changed in Feb. 2018, however. When asked the same question in her final days, Bush said she’d renounced the GOP.
“I’d probably say no today,” she replied.
The Bush family has been critical of Trump for decades. As far back as the 1990s, Bush’s diary reportedly included nasty comments regarding Trump when he was divorcing his first wife, Ivana Trump.
“The Trumps are a new word, both of them,” Page said Bush wrote in her diary. “Trump now means Greed, selfishness and ugly. So sad.”
Regarding Trump supporters, Bush wrote that she didn’t understand and why they backed the president.
She also wrote that she “could not vote for Trump or Clinton” in the 2016 presidential election and wrote her son, Jeb Bush, on the ballot.
However, she’d expected former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to win the election — and even wrote Bill Clinton a “Welcome to the First Ladies Club” note as a joke.
She never sent it because she “woke up and discovered to my horror that Trump had won.”
After meeting with Trump, Bush’s opinion softened somewhat. She wrote in her diary that the president was charming and “very nice” and wrote letters to First Lady Melania Trump.
The Horn editorial team