Welcome to another edition of the Schmidt Storm. You have questions. I have answers. Let's get

started. The question is, why is George W. Bush abjectly silent about the threat to American

democracy posed by the Republican nominee Donald Trump? This is a great question. And as an

alumni of the George W. Bush administration,

it's a question that I have a very, very hard time with. This idea that George W. Bush is now a painter

and retired from presidential politics. I don't accept. He is a former president of the United

States. He is, when he took the oath,

one of 42 people in American history who had ever taken it to preserve, protect, and defend the

Constitution of the United States. We're not having a debate about tax policy. So George W. Bush's

restraint to give his predecessor room to operate without the

encumbrances of a former president in the news making their difficult job more difficult

is basically the right thing to do. President Obama has followed this path largely as well.

But when there are exigent circumstances, and there is now, because Donald Trump, the demagogue, is talking about people of color eating pets,

and George W. Bush had a philosophy that he talked about when he shared his view that when you see the migrant coming across the desert,

coming across the border, walking, facing death to survive for their family, for a better life,

that we should have compassion for that person as one of God's children.

Donald Trump is dehumanizing people. George W. Bush, his greatest achievement

as president, was the president's emergency plan for AIDS relief in Africa. It saved 100 million lives.

It's an extraordinary human achievement, and all of it is risked by Donald Trump. Yet the former president like Mitt Romney

has chosen indifference. MAGA plus indifference is Donald Trump's hand. He thinks it could be a

winning hand. Let's pray not. The choice requires the picking of sides. Neutrality helps MAGA.

So George W. Bush's silence is not neutrality. It's an indifference that amounts like Romney's

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