Donald Trump has offended Jeb Bush
Jeb Bush took time on the Fourth of July to call out Donald Trump, saying he takes his well-coiffed rival’s remarks about Mexican immigrants personally, according to The New York Times. During an interview with CNN last week, Trump said some immigrants crossing the border “killers and rapists.’’
After marching in a Fourth of July parade in Merrimack, New Hampshire, Bush said Trump’s comments were “extraordinarily ugly’’ and “way out of’’ mainstream Republican Party views, The New York Times reported.
“He’s doing this — he’s not a stupid guy, so I don’t assume he thinks that every Mexican crossing the border is a rapist. He’s doing this to inflame and incite and to draw attention, which seems to be the organizing principle of his campaign,’’ said the former Florida governor.
Bush’s wife, Columba, was born in Mexico, where she met Bush at the age of 16. The couple, who’s marriage was partially conducted in Spanish, reportedly raised their three children “to celebrate their bicultural roots.’’
In a CNN interview Wednesday, Trump doubled down on comments — for which he was fired by NBC, Univision, and Macy’s — that Mexican immigrants are bringing “drugs,’’ “crime,’’ and “rape’’ to the United States.
Trump said he got the information from a 2014 Fusion article that estimated 80 percent of Central American women passing through Mexico en route to the United States are raped. Fusion said it based the estimate on information given by unnamed migrant shelter directors.
When CNN anchor Don Lemon pointed out the article was about women being raped and not criminal coming across the border, Trump responded, “Somebody’s doing the the raping, Don.’’
According to Justice Quarterly, the crime rate of first-generation immigrants was actually “significantly lower’’ than the overall crime rate. Another study found no correlation between immigrants and violent crime. And a study in California found that the immigrants were underrepresented in prisons compared to their makeup of the overall population, especially among Mexicans.
In the Chicago Tribune, Harvard sociology professor Robert Sampson said immigrants have a lower crime rate than the general population because, “most Mexicans who undertake the risks and sacrifices required to come here want to work at honest jobs and provide for their families, not rape and kill.’’
In a recent CNN/WMUR New Hampshire poll, 11 percent of likely GOP voters said they would vote for Trump, second only to Bush, with 16 percent.
“Politically, we’re going to win when we’re hopeful and optimistic and big and broad rather than errrrr, grrrr, just angry all the time,’’ Bush said Saturday. “This is an exaggerated form of that, and there is no tolerance for it.’’
2016 presidential candidates:
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