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Bulwark Takes

Dubya's "Criticism" of Trump Isn't Subtle—It's Useless

Bulwark Takes

The Bulwark

Politics, News Commentary, News, Society & Culture

4.71.1K Ratings

🗓️ 16 February 2026

⏱️ 27 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

George W. Bush publishes an essay praising George Washington—and the media falls all over themselves calling it a jab at Trump. JVL and Tim Miller aren’t quite buying it.

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Transcript

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0:00.0

Hello, everyone. This is JVL here with my bulwark colleague, Tim Miller.

0:04.8

Before we get started, hit like, hit subscribe, follow us on the channel. It helps out a lot.

0:08.8

And I want to wish everybody a happy President's Day, especially to all the fascists,

0:14.9

neo-Nazis, Christian nationalists, white supremacists, and morons who said that it didn't matter

0:19.7

who you voted for because both sides

0:21.7

were equally bad. Tim? I think there's a lot of other people that fit in that category. I don't

0:30.7

know why you had to limit it to the fascist, white nationalist. Well, I figured this is the way our president.

0:34.1

Morons was kind of an umbrella category for everyone else.

0:38.3

You know, I'm just trying to channel the president.

0:39.9

And so we wake up today to see that George W. Bush has finally spoken out.

0:47.8

We had pieces in The Daily Beast and in the New York Times about how George W. Bush has written an essay on substack

0:55.6

about George Washington, and he is subtly throwing shade at Donald J. Trump. Tim, did you,

1:06.0

did you read that essay by George W. Bush on the substack called In Pursuit. We'll talk about in

1:12.7

a minute because I am hot over these people who refuse to take their own fucking side in a fight.

1:17.6

Yeah, I have, I read it after I take the pot, hence us gathering back together, you and me,

1:22.3

to discuss this. I want to get into the details. I know you have a lot of thoughts on former

1:26.7

President Bush and the way he's positioning himself. I just want to speak a little bit about that point. We've been doing this for 10 years now, the point of how there are subtle jabs at Donald Trump. I always felt this way about at funerals, you know, at the McCain funeral and the H.W. Bush funeral and funerals aren't necessarily the place to go, you know, hard as a motherfucker against the sitting president probably. But like, there was always, there would be complaints from the magazine. Like, oh, there were, this was inappropriate. Like, they're attacking Trump. Like, here's the thing. You cannot write an essay. You cannot give a eulogy. You cannot speak about the moral

2:02.4

values of someone else in your life without subtly dissing Donald Trump because Donald Trump

2:09.7

does not care about or share any of the values that underpin what you would want

2:17.8

our national experiment

2:20.9

or any personal character traits.

2:24.6

John Trump's whole schick is that he doesn't give a

...

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