Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush’s presidential campaign released a video Tuesday that purports to show the “real Donald Trump” using past statements from the billionaire businessman saying he is “very pro-choice” and praising former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton as a “terrific woman.”
“I lived in New York City and Manhattan all my life, okay? So, you know, my views are a little bit different than if I lived in Iowa,” Mr. Trump, one of Mr. Bush’s chief 2016 GOP rivals, says in the ad in a clip that’s dated Oct. 24, 1999.
It also shows a 1999 clip of Mr. Trump saying he is “very pro-choice” and a clip from the first GOP presidential debate in which Mr. Trump says a single-payer health care system works in Canada and “incredibly well” in Scotland.
Mr. Trump, a vociferous critic of Obamacare, also said in the first debate that single payer “could have worked in a different age.”
The new video also includes past praise for President Obama’s stimulus plan from Mr. Trump.
CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer also asks Mr. Trump who he would like representing the United States in an unspecified “deal with Iran.”
“I think Hillary would do a good job,” Mr. Trump says.
“Hillary Clinton, I think, is a terrific woman,” he says in another clip. “I mean, I’m a little biased because I’ve known her for years.”
More recently, Mr. Trump has hammered the nuclear deal with Iran brokered by President Obama and other world leaders and called Mrs. Clinton, the 2016 Democratic presidential front-runner, the worst secretary of state in the history of the country.
The video comes a day after Mr. Trump released his own video hammering Mr. Bush for comments the former governor made last year saying that some illegal immigrants come into the country out of an “act of love.”
The two have been sparring lately, with Mr. Trump repeatedly knocking Mr. Bush as “low-energy” and Mr. Bush hammering Mr. Trump’s immigration proposal, which includes a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, as a costly plan that could violate people’s civil liberties.
• David Sherfinski can be reached at dsherfinski@washingtontimes.com.
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