“He’s so polite. We brought him up that way, and he does not brag like some people we know,” Barbara Bush said. | AP Photo Barbara Bush: Jeb is 'almost too polite'

Former first lady Barbara Bush has some advice for Jeb Bush ahead of Saturday’s Republican debate: Man up.

“He’s almost too polite. I don’t advise him, but if I gave him advice I would say, 'Why don’t you interrupt like other people do?'” Barbara Bush said in a joint interview with her son that aired Friday on “CBS This Morning.” She was referring to her son's performance in the Republican debates.


“I've gotten better at interrupting, Mom,” Jeb Bush said. “Come on.”

“He’s so polite. We brought him up that way, and he does not brag like some people we know,” Barbara Bush continued, likely alluding to Donald Trump.

Asked who she was talking about, she said, “I can’t remember.”

“I’m not getting in a spitting match with him,” she added. “He can spit further than I can.”

Barbara Bush is joining her son on the campaign trail in New Hampshire. She also was featured in a campaign ad last month, praising her son for his “big heart.”

Trump responded to the ad, saying the former Florida governor “desperately needed Mommy to help him. Jeb --- Mom can’t help you with ISIS, the Chinese or with Putin.”

“Putin endorsed him, for heaven’s sake,” Barbara Bush said in the interview. “Putin, the killer. Putin … the worst. That’s an endorsement you don’t want.”

The former first lady said she was helping “because I love my son, and I know that America needs him. He’s honest, dependable, loyal, relatively funny, good-looking but funny. He’s got the same values that America seems to have lost.”