Everyone has a top memory from the highlight reel of George W. Bush’s presidency: Standing on the rubble with a bullhorn at the World Trade Center after September 11. Passing a bill that dedicated billions of dollars for AIDS research. Or the capture of the leader of Iraq, Saddam Hussein.
But for Donald Trump, it was something else altogether.
“Do you remember when the Iraqi threw the shoe at George W. Bush?” conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt asked the Republican front-runner on Wednesday.
“Well, that may have been his best moment, if you want to know the truth, which is pretty sad to say,” said Trump.
Hewitt told Trump that the 2008 incident — in which Bush calmly dodged two shoes thrown as projectiles by an Iraqi reporter during a news conference in Baghdad — reminded him of Trump’s own altercation on Tuesday evening.
Trump tangled with prominent Latino journalist Jorge Ramos, a well-known Univision anchor, at a press conference in Iowa when Ramos confronted Trump over his controversial immigration positions. Ramos was initially tossed out by security, but later re-admitted and sparred with Trump in a few testy exchanges.
Trump’s admiration for Bush’s agility and poise in the face of shoe leather is not necessarily a compliment of the highest order, given his antipathy for Bush’s leadership. Trump has for years been very critical of the Bush 43’s administration, proclaiming the Bill Clinton presidency better than Bush’s.
“I think Bush is probably the worst president in the history of the United States,” Trump told CNN in 2007.
That said, Trump told Bloomberg News on Wednesday in a separate interview that he voted for George H.W. Bush for president in 1992, and then his son eight years later.