Jeb Bush took aim Tuesday at Donald Trump, his main antagonist in the GOP primary field, with a web video that highlights the liberal positions Trump has espoused over the last two decades — and his past support for Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton.
The video, which Bush’s campaign posted Tuesday morning on YouTube, paints Trump — through his own words — as a pro-choice, pro-Canadian style universal health care New York liberal who’s praised Hillary Clinton on more than one occasion.
Trump slammed the video as “yet another weak hit by a candidate with a failing campaign” in a series of tweets and wondered allowed whether Bush will “sink as low in the polls as the others who have gone after me.” Trump also slammed Bush’s campaign ads as “funded by lobbyists and special interests.”
Bush’s video posted one day after the real estate mogul took his latest jab at the former Florida governor in an Instagram video, this time knocking Bush for calling illegal immigration “an act of love.” The video splices mug shots of undocumented immigrants who were charged with murder.
Bush slammed that video as a complete mischaracterization of his position, which he contrasted with his own video slamming Trump.
“Our ad simply uses his own language, his own words…those are his words not mine, I didn’t exaggerate a single thing,” Bush said Tuesday morning on Fox News.
Bush posted his video Tuesday morning, tweeting it as “.@realDonaldTrump in his own words” — just the latest in a series of volleys the two candidates have traded in recent weeks, with the Bush camp showing itself increasingly willing to hit back just as vigorously.
“I lived in New York City and Manhattan all my life, so my views are a little bit different than if I lived in Iowa,” Trump says in the video’s opening clip, pulled from Trump’s 1999 appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
That clip is highlighted at the front and back end of the video, a clear attempt to undercut Trump’s support in Iowa, where he is perched atop the polls, several spots ahead of Bush, who is struggling to catch fire in the first-in-the nation caucus state.
Trump’s praise of Clinton includes two interviews in which Trump calls her “very talented” and “terrific,” noting that he’s “a little biased because I’ve known her for years.”
But the kicker is a clip from nearly three decades ago, in which, Trump is asked in 1988 why he’s a Republican.
“I have no idea,” Trump replies.
The Bush campaign also uses the video as an opportunity to highlight Bush’s conservative record as governor of Florida, sending viewers who watch all the way through to a page on Bush’s campaign website touting that record.