Jeb Bush has maintained that Donald Trump can't insult his way to White House. | Getty Bush: Trump attacks me because he's scared of me

Jeb Bush thinks Donald Trump continues to attack him because Trump is afraid of him.

Bush knocked the Republican poll leader as just an entertainer who isn’t going to be commander in chief, adding that Trump fears his rise. “The reason why he attacks me is he’s scared of me,” Bush told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Wednesday. “He’s insecure. He doesn’t believe that he can take me on, and while I’m doing worse than him in the polls, the simple fact is, why would he spend his time tearing down someone who’s so low compared to him? This is because we’re moving up, and I believe that he believes that we’re the real challenge for his winning the nomination.”


Earlier Wednesday, Trump touted his poll numbers at two campaign stops, saying Iowa is the only state where a competitor polls near him. Trump and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz are neck-and-neck in Iowa, though Trump leads by 20 points in the latest New Hampshire survey.

Bush has seen a modest uptick in New Hampshire, and he credited that to his message of hope and his record as governor of Florida. “So it’s a tangible result that people are looking for,” Bush said. “I have the leadership skills to do this. Donald Trump is neither a conservative nor a leader, and while he’s a great entertainer … he is not a conservative. And we need to have a conservative be nominated to beat Hillary Clinton.”

Trump blasted Bush at his rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, earlier Wednesday, touting a Florida poll that had “Bush down in the toilet.” Trump said Bush, who released a futuristic anti-Trump ad on Wednesday showing Clinton’s inauguration after Trump concedes the 2016 election, has spent more than $79 million in ads.

“The first thing he should do is he should get rid of the Jeb stuff. Get rid of all of the nonsense that he’s going through with, ‘I can fix it.’ You know, his new slogan, ‘I can fix it,’” Trump said. “He can’t fix anything. He’s a low-energy person. Low-energy people don’t get things fixed.”

But Bush has maintained that Trump can’t insult his way to the White House, most recently citing Trump’s attacks against him and his rhetoric toward women, Hispanics, a disabled journalist and even Arizona Sen. John McCain on Wednesday. “That’s not how you win,” he said. “That’s how you lose. We need to have an uplifting message applying conservative ideas in the right way. And that’s what I’m prepared to do.”