Trump upstages, attacks Bush in New Hampshire

For Donald Trump, it wasn’t enough to upstage Jeb Bush by booking a town hall meeting at the same time as the former Florida governor. Trump had to attack him, too.

In a 30-minute news conference in Derry, New Hampshire, that was broadcast live on Fox News and CNN, the real estate mogul ripped into his GOP primary rival, saying, “I don’t think he’s electable.”


“Jeb Bush is a low-energy person. For him to get things done is hard,” a feisty Trump said.

Trump went after the former Florida governor on multiple fronts, dismissing Bush’s positions on education, health care, immigration and foreign policy.

After criticizing Bush’s support for the Common Core educational standards, Trump turned to Iraq.

Bush saying the U.S. had to show they had “skin in the game” by committing more resources to combating the Islamic State was “one of the the dumber things I’ve heard, ever, in politics,” Trump said.

“Between Common Core, his ‘act of love’ on immigration and ‘skin in the game’ with Iraq … I don’t see how he’s electable. And then on top of that he talks about women’s health issues,” Trump said.

“I think that Jeb Bush is totally out of touch on women’s health issues, I mean totally,” he said, referring to Bush’s comment earlier this month that “I’m not sure we need a half a billion dollars for women’s health programs” — a garbled reference to government funding for Planned Parenthood.

Trump said he’s the only candidate consistently leading the GOP pack. He also said he recently had a physical examination and was very healthy and ready to take on the presidency.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he said. “I will win for the American people.”

At his town hall later that night — his first of the campaign — Trump continued the attacks.

“Right down the road, we have Jeb — very small crowd,” he said. “You know what’s happening to Jeb’s crowd right down the street? They’re sleeping now.”

Trump said that he’s only talking about Bush because “he’s going down like a rock” even though he was supposed to do well in New Hampshire.

Bush fired back briefly during his town hall, just 20 miles away in Merrimack, and criticized Trump’s call to build a wall along the Mexico border and deport undocumented immigrants — plans that POLITICO estimated would cost more than $166 billion to implement.

“Mr. Trump doesn’t have a proven conservative record,” Bush said. “He was a Democrat longer in the last decade than he was a Republican. … The language is pretty vitriolic for sure. But hundreds of millions of dollars to implement his [immigration] plans is not a conservative plan.”

Brianna Ehley contributed to this report.