Bannon says Bush 'embarrassed himself' with a 'high falutin' speech

Stephen Bannon at CA GOP convention

Ousted White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon attacked fellow Republican former President George W. Bush while speaking at the California GOP convention banquet Friday evening.

"There has not been a more destructive presidency than George Bush's," Bannon said, arguing that Bush "embarrassed himself" with a "high falutin" speech in New York City on Thursday. Bush's talk did not mention President Trump by name, but its decrial of "discourse degraded by casual cruelty" was widely regarded as a critique of Trump.

Bush "has no earthly idea of whether he's coming or going," Bannon added Friday, "just like it was when he was president."

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Watch Bannon's full speech below — the Bush comments begin around the 24-minute mark — and read The Week's Paul Waldman on why even Trump critics shouldn't misremember Dubya as a representative of a nobler age and a nobler GOP. Bonnie Kristian

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.