WASHINGTON — President Trump had a fast response on Sunday after former President George W. Bush known as for nationwide unity. He attacked Mr. Bus
WASHINGTON — President Trump had a fast response on Sunday after former President George W. Bush known as for nationwide unity. He attacked Mr. Bush.
Nationwide unity, Mr. Trump made clear, was not on his agenda for the day, at the same time as the death toll from the coronavirus pandemic that has ravaged the country passed 67,000 and tens of millions of out-of-work Americans struggled to get by.
Then he planned to end his day with a long appearance on Fox News aimed not at speaking to the country as a whole but to his political base six months to the day before the November election, headlining a virtual “town hall” on the pandemic at the Lincoln Memorial, named for another previous president who famously once warned that “a house divided against itself cannot stand.”
The messages of the day underscored once again that Mr. Trump does not view the presidency in the same way as its previous occupants, favoring combativeness over conciliation even in times of national crisis. For Mr. Trump, it is a formula that has worked and one that finds him at his most comfortable and confident.
He regularly scorns the notion that he should be more “presidential,” dismissing that concept as weak and boring. But it is at moments like this that his departure from the norms of his office becomes most evident.
Mr. Trump, who spent the weekend at Camp David in his first getaway since most of the nation began locking down in mid-March, seemed peeved at a three-minute video message posted by Mr. Bush that made no mention of the current president but warned against partisanship in a time of peril.
“Let us remember how small our differences are in the face of this shared threat,” Mr. Bush said in the professionally produced video set in opposition to music and pictures of medical staff serving to victims of the virus and of odd People sporting masks. “Within the closing evaluation, we’re not partisan combatants. We’re human beings, equally weak and equally great within the sight of God. We rise or fall collectively, and we’re decided to rise.”
Whereas Mr. Bush by no means talked about Mr. Trump’s identify, the sitting president clearly took the message as an implicit rebuke. In a Twitter message, Mr. Trump paraphrased a Fox Information character saying, “Oh bye the best way, I admire the message from former President Bush, however the place was he throughout Impeachment calling for placing partisanship apart.”
Mr. Trump then added in his personal voice: “He was nowhere to be present in talking up in opposition to the best Hoax in American historical past!”
Hours later, Mr. Trump went after one other predecessor, reposting a tweet from a pro-Trump web site accusing Mr. Obama of plotting in opposition to him. “Proof has surfaced that signifies Barack Obama was the one operating the Russian hoax,” stated the unique message retweeted by the president.
Mr. Trump additionally reposted messages attacking Consultant Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California and the leader of the House managers who prosecuted the president at his Senate impeachment trial this year, and vowing to deny federal money to bail out states that maintain sanctuary policies protecting some illegal immigrants. In a less feisty moment, the president did take time out to post a message praising his golf course in Scotland.
Mr. Bush’s video message was a part of a collection of movies aired on-line as a part of a 24-hour live-streamed mission, “The Name to Unite,” that additionally featured Oprah Winfrey, Tim Shriver, Julia Roberts, Martin Luther King III, Sean Combs, Quincy Jones, Naomi Judd, Andrew Yang and others.
Mr. Bush’s workplace stated he had no response to Mr. Trump’s message. “The video was part of an occasion known as ‘A Name to Unite,’” stated Freddy Ford, the previous president’s chief of workers. “I hope these overlaying it should resist the temptation to make use of it as a name to divide.” Mr. Obama’s workplace had no remark.
Former President Invoice Clinton additionally delivered a message, talking right into a digital camera in what appeared like a video chat from his house. “We’d like one another, and we do higher after we work collectively,” he stated. “That’s by no means been extra clear to me as I’ve seen the braveness and dignity of the primary responders, the well being care staff, all of the people who find themselves serving to them to offer our meals, our transportation, our fundamental companies to the opposite important staff.”
Mr. Trump has declined to name on his predecessors to assist carry the nation collectively through the pandemic. Previous presidents made a degree of enlisting former occupants of the White Home from each events in occasions of disaster to display nationwide resolve and unity.
Mr. Bush recruited his father, former President George Bush, and Mr. Clinton to answer a devastating tsunami in Asia after which to Hurricane Katrina. Mr. Obama requested the youthful Mr. Bush and Mr. Clinton to answer an earthquake in Haiti.
Mr. Bush has by no means been a fan of his fellow Republican president. Mr. Trump defeated his brother Jeb Bush for the nomination in 2016 and has criticized the 43rd president’s document repeatedly. Mr. Bush refused to assist Mr. Trump that fall, saying he had voted for “not one of the above” as an alternative. Whereas disturbed by Mr. Trump’s management, Mr. Bush has largely stored quiet since then with a few notable exceptions, resembling a speech in New York and a eulogy for Senator John McCain that have been seen as implicit rebukes of the incumbent.
In his video message on Saturday, Mr. Bush recalled the troublesome days after Sept. 11, 2001. “Allow us to keep in mind, we’ve got confronted occasions of testing earlier than,” he stated as photographs flashed on the display of him comforting kinfolk of these killed within the assaults. “Following 9/11, I noticed an amazing nation rise as one to honor the courageous, to grieve with the grieving and to embrace unavoidable new duties. And I’ve little doubt, none in any respect, that this spirit of service and sacrifice is alive and nicely in America.”
Mr. Bush additionally known as for compassion, a trait that Mr. Trump has largely eschewed through the pandemic in favor of demonstrating what he considers energy and optimism. “Allow us to do not forget that empathy and easy kindness are important, highly effective instruments of nationwide restoration,” Mr. Bush stated. And he added, “Let’s do not forget that the struggling we expertise as a nation doesn’t fall evenly.”