Barbara Bush blamed Trump for exacerbating heart issues, author says

In a new book compiled from interviews in the final six months of her life, the late first lady Barbara Bush cited "angst" brought on by then-presidential candidate Donald Trump's persistent attacks on her son Jeb during the 2016 campaign as an exacerbating factor to her congestive heart failure. In "The Matriarch: Barbara Bush and the Making of an American Dynasty," author and USA Today Washington Bureau chief Susan Page recounts Bush being rushed to the hospital in June 2016.

"The tumultuous presidential campaign in general and Trump's ridicule of son Jeb Bush in particular had riled her," Page writes. According to Page, Jeb had urged the former first lady to "let go" of her frustrations with the controversial candidate, and instead focus on herself and her health. Mr. Trump would often criticize Jeb as being "weak" and "low energy" on the campaign trail.

"Jeb said, 'Mom, don't worry about things you can't do anything about,'" Barbara Bush told Page. "He's right. Just do good, make life better for someone else."

Over the course of the campaign, the unfiltered matriarch expressed disbelief about some of the things then-candidate Trump had said about women, not afraid to punch back at Mr. Trump's commentary of her son.

"I mean, unbelievable. I don't know how women can vote for someone who said what he said about Megyn Kelly," she said in an interview with CBS News. "And we knew what he meant too!"

Despite Bush saying in 2013 that the country had "had enough Bushes", the former first lady campaigned with Jeb in 2016 in his bid for the Republican nomination. Jeb would go on to not win a single state in the 2016 primary.

But even as a lifelong devotee to the Republican party, Bush told Page in February of 2018 that she'd "probably say no today" when asked if she considered herself a member of the party in the era of Trump.

"I'm trying not to think about it," she said of the Trump presidency in an interview with Page. "We're a strong country, and I think it will all work out."

Bush, the second woman in U.S. history to be a first lady and mother of a president, died at age 92.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/barbara-bush-blamed-trump-for-riling-up-heart-issues-new-book-susan-page/

Responding Sanely to Mueller

The liberal establishment’s reactions ranged from sorrow to outright denial when the Mueller Report turned up little evidence of the Trump team colluding with Russia. The right crowed that it was a complete exoneration of their Teflon Don, strongman hero of Great America. But there were sane reactions to the Report as well. Let’s briefly rank reactions, then, not from left to right but from most-sane to least-sane. It’s interesting (but will likely be forgotten by most of the electorate soon enough) how many hard-left writers, as opposed to liberal-establishment (that is, Democratic Party) ones, have been saying the whole Russia thing is a witchhunt for a while now, denouncing the centrist Dems for pushing the issue. Michael Tracey, Matt Taibbi, The Nation, Glenn Greenwald, and several others haven’t been muted about the Russia suspicions, haven’t merely been more cautious than the mainstream Dems, but rather genuinely enraged at the press and Dems for continually hyping this issue with little evidence. The real left laments the Russia-collusion monomania distracted America from more serious and substantive criticisms of Trump that should’ve been under discussion. Many a libertarian like me would agree. There’s no clinching evidence Trump’s a Putin pawn, but he’s still a protectionist, blowhard, xenophobe, giant-deficit-maker, etc. You have to wonder lately, though, whether even that list of flaws makes him as bad or as nuts as the press/political establishment.

That’s not to say the Russians don’t prefer U.S. anti-interventionists to U.S. hawks, of course. They do, for obvious selfish reasons, and they openly told lots of people in DC as much back around that time, before people got cagey again about international relations, but that doesn’t mean we should support hawks in knee-jerk fashion, nor anti-Russia paranoiacs.

Brennan, to his credit—or craftily sensing a change in the political air, which is his job—basically apologized after the Mueller Report for overestimating the weight of the evidence against Trump. That makes him almost as sane as the leftist skeptics mentioned above (though it doesn’t compensate for him being a big fan of Russia back in the 1970s, when he admits he was a U.S. Communist Party voter—perhaps one who now resents Russia losing its old faith). Seth Abramson, just a click crazier, is not throwing in the towel on Russiagate. He just wrote a book a few months ago offering “proof” of Trump-Russia collusion, so he’s not going to go quietly. But I still rate his reaction to the Mueller Report somewhat sane, even if he’s repeating calls for impeachment that now seem likely to fall on deaf ears. The reason for my moderate reaction to him is that he remains focused on details, and details matter in legal arguments. As Abramson explains in a long Twitter thread, Mueller didn’t intensely investigate the specific collusion charges that some people such as Abramson considered the most credible, and Mueller deferred various parts of the obstruction investigation to others, who may yet find something juicy in piecemeal fashion. I wouldn’t hold my breath, but this is a more reasonable and expert reaction than that of…

…Rachel Maddow, who was the star of anti-Russia propaganda efforts by the mainstream media for over a year and who will now be remembered as perhaps the only significant public figure visibly reduced to tears by the news that the Mueller investigation had come up short. Unlike most of the ghouls on Twitter these days, my reaction, since I’m not a sadist, isn’t to laugh at (or metaphorically “drink”) her tears but to be a little frightened by them, frankly. They’re a reminder what a religious crusade left-wing causes are for many in and outside the media. They don’t so much seek facts as hope against hope that their faith will be rewarded, their hated and demonic foes smashed. That ain’t healthy.

There are crazier reactions out there, including ones from the right that allege, in the fashion of online conspiracy theorist QAnon, that every Trump travail is merely a brilliant step in Trump’s master plan to take down the globalist conspiracy—but when liberals reach the point that they’re assuring people their MSNBC-spawned conspiracy theories make more sense than QAnon, they’ve set a very low bar, and reached a very low ebb. Time to MoveOn.

full (edited for space) https://www.splicetoday.com/politics-and-media/responding-sanely-to-mueller

>>5919996

love and strength to you anon.

May he rest in peace and love. I'm so sorry.