(Newser) – George HW Bush has finally broken his silence on what he thought about his son's administration—and it turns out he was no fan of Dick Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld. In Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush, the senior Bush tells biographer Jon Meacham that the "iron-ass" Cheney who emerged after 9/11 was very different from the man who served as his defense secretary, reports the New York Times. But while Cheney was a "good man," Bush says in the book, Rumsfeld "was an arrogant fellow" who "served the president badly." He, too, gets the memorable label: "I don't like what he did, and I think it hurt the president having his iron-ass view of everything," Bush says.

Bush 41 says Cheney may have been influenced by his own wife and daughter's hard-line views, and he adds it was a big mistake for his son to have let Cheney "bring in kind of his own State Department." In the book, he also criticizes some of his son's rhetoric, including "Axis of Evil," but says, "He's my son, he did his best, and I'm for him," the Times notes. Cheney tells Fox News that despite the criticism, he's enjoying the book, and since 9/11 was "worse than Pearl Harbor," he considers the "iron-ass" label a compliment. The book, which will be released next week, also reveals that Donald Trump sought to become Bush 41's vice president in 1988, and that Jeb Bush—who's currently trying to become Bush 45—urged his father to ditch Dan Quayle in 1992, the Times reports. (Read more George W. Bush stories.)

