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‘The real symbol of greed’: Why Barbara Bush couldn’t stand Donald Trump

During the 2016 presidential campaign, former first lady Barbara Bush made it clear with regular critiques that she didn’t like then-candidate Donald Trump.

“He sort of makes faces and says insulting things,” Mrs Bush told CNN.

“He’s said terrible things about women, terrible things about the military. I don’t understand why people are for him.”

Nearly a year after she died at age 92 last April, Mrs Bush’s dislike for Mr Trump is still making news.

A biography released on Tuesday (US time) claims her animosity for the President went back decades, with a January 1990 reference to him as “the real symbol of greed in the ’80s”.

The dismissive label came after Mrs Bush was unimpressed by Mr Trump needling former president Ronald Reagan at a Los Angeles gala for TV host Merv Griffin.

Mrs Bush was on the same Republican team as Mr Trump – she was the wife of one US president and mother of another – but never on the same page, according to The Matriarch: Barbara Bush and the Making of an American Dynasty.

Author Susan Page, the Washington bureau chief for USA Today, had access to volumes of Mrs Bush’s diaries, which she started keeping in 1948, and did five interviews with her.

Ivana Trump Donald Trump

Ivana and Donald Trump at the 1991 Man of the Year awards in New York. Photo: Getty

In the early 1990s Mrs Bush noted rumours that Mr Trump’s reported $US25 million divorce settlement from first wife Ivana wouldn’t keep the outgoing Mrs Trump happy.

“The Trumps are a new word, both of them,” Mrs Bush wrote.

“Trump now means greed, selfishness and ugly. So sad.”

The ensuing years apparently didn’t temper her dislike of Mr Trump, who dissed her son Jeb during the 2016 Republican presidential nomination and caused what she called a “heart attack” during the election.

Asked months before her death if she still thought of herself as a Republican, Mrs Bush said, “I’d probably say no today”.

Anticipating Hillary Clinton would become president, Mrs Bush wrote a letter to send after the election to her husband, former president Bill Clinton, welcoming him to the first spouses’ club.

The letter was never sent. Mrs Bush woke up the day after the election “and discovered, to my horror, that Trump had won”.

Until she died, she had on her bedside table a red, white and blue digital clock that counted down to the end of Mr Trump’s term. He golfed the day of her funeral, amid reports the Bush family banned him from attending.

Mr Trump wasn’t Mrs Bush’s only enemy. According to The Matriarch, another nemesis was fellow former first lady Nancy Reagan.

“She hated us,” Mrs. Bush told Ms Page. “I don’t know why, but she really hated us.”

When the ruling Reagans hosted a glittering 1985 White House dinner for Prince Charles and Princess Diana, Mrs Bush and her husband George Bush were snubbed.

At the time, Mr Bush was vice president and protocol dictated he and Mrs Bush should be invited to the bash, which saw John Travolta spin Diana around the dance floor.

John Travolta Princess Diana

Nancy Reagan (centre, in white) beamed as John Travolta spun Diana to the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack. Photo: Getty

Citing documents from the Reagan Library archives, The Matriarch claims the Bush names were crossed out by hand from an initial invitation list and a plan for them to “greet guests in the Red Room”.

The Bushes appeared only under a “suggested additions” section on the second and third lists, according to Page.

When deputy White House chief of staff Michael Deaver warned Mrs Reagan against the move, writes Page, she said, “Just watch me”.

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