Bush attacks... More like a brush swipe...

Bush: Trump 'a creature of Barack Obama'

He says Trump is appealing to voters because Obama has divided the nation.

By Hanna Trudo

Not only is Donald Trump a “jerk” in the eyes of Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush, but he’s also “a creature of Barack Obama.”

Speaking to NPR’s Steve Inskeep on Morning Edition, the former Florida governor took jabs at the party’s leading presidential candidate while opining about his own political future.

“I would argue that Donald Trump is, in fact, a creature of Barack Obama,” Bush said during the Boston-based interview, set to air Thursday.

“But for Barack Obama, Donald Trump’s effect would not be nearly as strong as it is. We’re living in a divided country right now, and we need political leaders rather than continuing to divide as both President Obama and Donald Trump, to unite us,” he said.

Trump and Bush have sustained a distinctly high level of personal and political attacks toward each other throughout the campaign.

Inskeep later asked about the affect Trump’s proposed temporary ban on Muslims entering the United States could have on Republican primary voters. Other GOP candidates have condemned the idea as offensive and out of touch with the base's stance on religious inclusion and constitutional protections.

Quick to minimize the support his billionaire opponent has amassed among those in favor of the proposed measure, Bush replied, “In a month from now, voters won't agree with him. That's the point. The point is, that we're living in this reality TV political environment where he fills the space by saying outrageous things."

Bush added, “People, based on their emotions, will express support for the sentiment, not necessarily the specifics, because there are none and then he'll backtrack. And he'll move on the next thing and he fills the space.”

As the conversation shifted from Trump to foreign policy, Bush told Inskeep that his plans for combating ISIL would be starkly different from Obama’s, which he described as “incremental” earlier in the month.

“He hasn't laid out a strategy, in fact, until recently, he admitted in the last year and three months, he's admitted twice that we didn't have a strategy. He made the mistake of talking about containing ISIS, as though that would be an effective strategy. And then shortly after that, the tragedy of Paris took place. And incrementally, you can continue to see it,” he said.

“There's been some success,” he continued. “This week, there was a successful airstrike that killed one of the high-ranking ISIS operatives. That's good news. But a strategy would require explaining to the American people what the objectives are, how we would go about doing it, doing it in a transparent way, I think.”

In a Bush administration, things would be different, said the former governor, who recently made a plea to donors that the polls indicating his lower standing among voters are not accurate.

“The job of a president is to identify — distinguish between the two, make sure that people know that we view it as a threat, that we're — because people are scared and they're legitimately so — take action accordingly, and then you're going to lessen peoples' fears on their day-to-day activities. We can't be paralyzed in place and that's where we are today.”

If Trump were elected into the Oval Office, however, Bush added that his current strategy for defeating the terrorist organization could pose a danger itself.

“Trump clearly banning all Muslims would actually be so counterproductive in our efforts to destroy ISIS, that it's foolhardy. I mean, it's beyond ridiculous, it's quite dangerous,” he concluded.