MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell condemned George W. Bush for not publicly denouncing former President Donald Trump.
O’Donnell told the Fast Politics podcast that it is “morally indefensible” that the former Republican president has not commented on the upcoming election. Moreover, he specifically called on Bush to encourage voters not to support the current Republican presidential nominee.
“All any decent person wants him to do is to say, ‘Don’t vote for Donald Trump, and here’s why,’ and he won’t even do that,” said the show host.
A spokesperson for Bush said neither he nor former First Lady Laura Bush would publicly reveal who they intend to vote for during the 2024 election.
“President Bush retired from presidential politics years ago,” said his representative, per The Independent.
America’s 43rd president was asked about his endorsement plans after his vice president, Dick Cheney, publicly backed Vice President Kamala Harris.
This is not the first time O’Donnell has attacked Bush for his silence on the current election.
While discussing the overturning of Roe V. Wade, the host said the Supreme Court’s ruling jeopardized access to dilation and curettage (D&C) procedures, a surgical process involving the scrapping of the uterine lining. D&Cs can be used to diagnose abnormal bleeding or to clear the contents of a uterus after a miscarriage that have not passed naturally to prevent infection or heavy bleeding, per Hopkins Medicine. D&Cs that are performed to terminate a pregnancy could violate state laws that went into effect after the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
“George W. Bush in his silent retirement in Texas made that routine medical procedure a felony,” O’Donnell said on his show The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell, per The Wrap.
The television personality said Trump “is pretending that he has no blood on his hands.”
“Donald Trump is pretending that he had nothing to do with making a procedure, a routine medical procedure like a D&C, a felony,” he said. He also blamed the Supreme Court for handing “the 2000 presidential election to George W. Bush,” which he linked to the death of Amber Nicole Thurman.
Thurman died in August of 2022 during emergency surgery after taking an abortion pill and experiencing a rare complication. The 28-year-old was pregnant with twins at the time. Her death was widely condemned as preventable by pro-abortion advocates, per Newsweek.
“Without George W. Bush’s appointees to the Supreme Court, Amber Nicole Thurman would be alive tonight,” said O’Donnell. “The choices made by George W. Bush and Donald Trump are now killing people.”
O’Donnell has also been open about his loathing of Trump. In August, he called the Republican the “stupidest person who has ever won a nomination for president” and referred to the current election as “2016 all over again.”
He mocked Trump’s performance in the Sept. 10 debate against Harris.
“Trump chose two modes at the podium: the angry and bitter 78-year-old man while he was speaking, and the mugshot face while he was listening,” he said, per The Daily Beast. “He was looking at nothing, just lost in the wilderness of his own confusion of what was happening to him, and what was happening to him was that he was being beaten much worse than any losing candidate in any presidential debate in history.”
