GOP presidential candidate Jeb Bush said his Republican opponent Donald Trump is “uninformed” on the crisis in Syria.
Speaking on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday, Bush reiterated that he has doubts about Trump’s ability to be president, which he has said multiple times throughout his campaign.
“I just think he’s uninformed,” Bush said. “He knows what he’s saying. He’s smart. He’s playing you guys like a fiddle, the press, by saying outrageous things and garnering attention.”
Bush said Trump has consistently been wrong about Syria and the refugee crisis.
“He first said we had no interest in being involved in Syria, then he said let the Russians take out ISIS, then he said let ISIS take out Assad, back and forth it goes, and the net effect of this is in these really serious times, he’s not a serious leader,” he said. “He’s all over the map, misinformed at best and preying on people’s fear at worst.”
In an interview with CNN in September, Trump said the U.S. should stay out of Syria.
“Let ISIS and Syria fight,” he said. “And let Russia, they’re in Syria already, let them fight ISIS.”
Bush’s remarks also come after Trump recently said he “would certainly implement” a database to track all Muslims in the United States. Bush’s national security adviser John Noonan tweeted last week that a registration based on religion would be fascist.
Forced federal registration of US citizens, based on religious identity, is fasicm. Period. Nothing else to call it. https://t.co/XYee8dEgJr
— John Noonan (@noonanjo) November 20, 2015Bush denounced the idea of a database on Friday on CNBC, calling it “just wrong.”
“It’s not a question of toughness,” he said. “It’s manipulating people’s angst and their fears. That’s not strength. That’s weakness.”
Nicole Brown