Former first lady Laura Bush refused to say whether she would vote for Donald Trump should he win the GOP nomination, saying she remains uncommitted since her brother-in-law Jeb dropped out of the race last month.
“If Donald Trump is the Republican nominee, will you vote for him?” USA Today’s Susan Page asked Mrs. Bush in an interview published Thursday.
“Susan, I’m not going to answer. Don’t ask that,” Mrs. Bush said frankly.
The former first lady admitted that she and her husband, former President George W. Bush, had remained on the political sidelines until Jeb entered the 2016 presidential race.
“We got off the sidelines for Jeb,” she said. “He was our candidate.”
Mrs. Bush has written the introduction for a new book, “We Are Afghan Women: Voices of Hope,” published this month by Scribner. Ms. Page pointed out that Mrs. Bush made it clear in her writing that she doesn’t think Islam hates America or that Muslims immigrants should be temporarily banned from entering the United States — two statements previously made by Mr. Trump.
“This is what I want Americans to remember — what our real values are,” Mrs. Bush told USA Today. “And one of the very first things, one of the reasons we’re a country is because we believe in freedom of religion. We believe that people could be religious. They could choose any religion they wanted to, or they could not worship, if they didn’t want to. We don’t have any religious test in the United States. And that’s what we need to remember. We need to remember what our own values are.
“We have a tendency in the United States, and it’s happened other times in our history, to become sort of isolationist and xenophobic and, you know, we’re just going to stay here together and not pay attention to the rest of the world,” she added. “And it’s something that we have to pay attention to now because our world is so small. And it’s important for us — even though we’ve gone through these stages many other times in our history — to pay attention to the rest of the world.”
• Jessica Chasmar can be reached at jchasmar@washingtontimes.com.
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