Donald Trump said Tuesday that former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush owes women an apology for his recent remarks about funding for women’s health and predicted they will be his “47 percent” moment, alluding to comments made by 2012 GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney.
“I think Jeb Bush owes women an apology, because he made a terrible statement about women’s health issues, and it was a foolish statement and perhaps a stupid statement,” Mr. Trump, a 2016 GOP presidential candidate, said on CNN’s “New Day.” “It’s a statement that should never have come up; it should never have been made, and I was shocked that he made it, and I think that will prove to be his 47 percent.”
Speaking about the recent effort to end all federal funding for Planned Parenthood, Mr. Bush said at a recent southern Baptist convention: “You could take dollar for dollar, although I’m not sure we need a half a billion dollars for women’s health issues, but if you took dollar for dollar, there are many extraordinarily fine organizations, community health organizations that exist, federally sponsored community health organizations to provide quality care for women on a wide variety of health issues.”
Critics later honed in on the middle portion of the statement from the presidential contender: “I’m not sure we need half a billion dollars for women’s health issues.”
During the 2012 cycle, Mr. Romney had said during a private event that 47 percent of the country largely dependent on the government were likely to support President Obama — comments that dogged the Republican for the rest of the campaign
Mr. Bush followed up to clarify that the point he was making was the need to address “the hard-to-fathom $500 million in federal funding that goes to Planned Parenthood — an organization that was callously participating in the unthinkable practice of selling fetal organs. Democrats and Republicans agree we absolutely must defund them and redirect those funds to other women’s health organizations.”
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The organization has come under fire recently amid a series of undercover videos that appear to show Planned Parenthood executives discussing the preservation of fetal specimens. Planned Parenthood has said repeatedly they do not profit off of fetal tissue donations and have labeled the videos by the Center for Medical Progress as misleading smear attacks.
Mr. Trump said $500 million is actually “peanuts” compared to what is being spent on other things.
“I think that was a terrible mistake that he made, and I think he’s the one that has to apologize to women,” he said.
Mr. Trump said he would be “so good” to women.
“I cherish women — I will be so good to women; I will work hard to protect women,” he said.
• David Sherfinski can be reached at dsherfinski@washingtontimes.com.
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