Jeb Bush has learned not to answer questions.
That’s what the former Florida governor said Thursday when asked if Hillary Clinton would make a better president than Donald Trump, his frequent rival on the campaign trail.
“I don’t think Hillary Clinton is going to be elected president of the United States,” Bush said to CNN’s John Berman on “Anderson Cooper 360.”
But that didn’t answer Berman’s question, which Bush acknowledged.
“No, I’ve learned not to answer questions. That’s one of the things you do now in political discourse. You answer what you want to say,” he replied with a chuckle.
Bush’s answers took on elevated meaning given that his campaign has considered breaking the pledge he signed to support the eventual Republican nominee. Tim Miller, Bush’s communications director, had said earlier Thursday that the campaign had done “due diligence” in examining the pledge’s rules, but Bush distanced himself a bit from those remarks, telling Berman instead that he “didn’t know they were doing this.”
Bush has typically resisted entertaining the notion that Trump, the far-and-away national front-runner, will actually win the nomination. And the former Florida governor, who has made a number of unforced errors on the campaign trail this year, tried to show greater message discipline on Thursday evening.
Pressed again a bit later, he offered an answer to a different question that wasn’t asked.
“Oh, absolutely, I’d be a better president than Hillary Clinton,” he said. “That’s why I’m running for president.”