Report: 'Bush the Decider' related to 'Vlad the Impaler' David Edwards and Muriel Kane

Published: Tuesday October 30, 2007



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Print This Email This Following the revelation that Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL), Vice President Dick Cheney and President George W. Bush are distant relations, the New York Post decided to report on some of Bush's other relatives. Most of Bush's ancestors came to America in colonial times, and through them he -- like tens of thousands of other Americans -- is related to a large number of earlier presidents, as well as to both Dick Cheney and John Kerry. Bush also turns out to be related to Vlad the Impaler -- the medieval tyrant who was one of the inspirations for the fictional Count Dracula. Some critics might say that Bush has certain things in common with Vlad, who is still honored by many Romanians for having saved their country from invasion by the Muslim Ottoman Turks. Vlad was a paranoid and bloodthirsty despot, however, who ruled through torture and murder. According to Crime Library, "During his tenure, he killed by the droves, impaling on a forest of spikes around his castle thousands of subjects who he saw as either traitors, would-be traitors or enemies to the security of Romania and the Roman Catholic Church. Sometimes, he slew merely to show other possible insurgents and criminals just what their fate would be if they became troublesome. A pamphlet published in Nuremburg, Germany, immediately following his death in 1476, tells of his burning beggars after allowing them free food at his court. 'He felt they were eating the people's food for nothing, and could not repay it,' the broadside explains." CNN reported at the time of the 2004 election that "Bush has closer ties to Dracula [than John Kerry], going back 32 generations to the former ruler of Transylvania and what is now southern Romania. Kerry has to go back 34 generations in the family tree." On a lighter note, Bush is also a relative of such celebrities as Brad Pitt, Hugh Hefner, and Marilyn Monroe, plus, more distantly, Madonna, Celine Dion, and Tom Hanks. The following video is from CBS's Early Show, broadcast on October 29, 2007.



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