Bush recounts Mittens...

Jeb Bush recounts conversation with Mitt Romney

By Nick Gass

Jeb Bush on Tuesday recounted his private conversation last year with Mitt Romney, reiterating that he has a plan to win the Republican nomination and shrugging off the suggestion that his older brother's legacy has been an albatross.

"The conversation with Mitt Romney brought back, you know a private conversation, brought back how I answered that, which is, I have a proven record," Bush said in an interview with MSNBC's "Morning Joe" from the campaign trail in New Hampshire, referring to an article in The Washington Post on Sunday that reported on details from their January 2015 meeting in Utah.

"You cannot beat Hillary Clinton, who has no record or a record of failure, with someone who doesn’t have a record at all," Bush went on. "And that was the case I made to Mitt, it’s the case I make to you all and the people in New Hampshire. I have a proven record, a conservative record that brought people towards our cause instead of pushing them away."

Asked whether the legacy of the Iraq war from George W. Bush has taken a toll on his public image and on his campaign, the former governor of Florida said it had "absolutely not."

"Look, Mitt Romney’s a great guy, and I do consider him a friend, and in that private conversation, we talked about the campaign ‘cause he was thinking about running and I went out to see him. I wanted him to know that I was all in and had a plan to win this, and I still do," he remarked. "But my brother — if you did the polling and actually looked at it, he’s probably the most popular president amongst Republicans in this country."

Bush remarked that he owned any mistakes he made as his own and that he had "gotten over" all of the "psychobabble" that goes along with following in his older brother's footsteps.

In discussing how he would win the nomination, he again took shots at Donald Trump, painting him as a "buddy of the Clintons" and the only person on the debate stage to have given money to both Clintons' political campaigns and their foundation.

"I think he’s probably the only guy [who] invited Hillary Clinton to his, one of his weddings," Bush continued. "His views are closer aligned to Hillary Clinton’s than that of a conservative. How can he beat Hillary Clinton? When we get into the general election, he’ll get crushed. You can’t insult your way to the presidency. I find it remarkable that no other candidate is taking him on. He’s a bully, and his views — while it’s very fun to talk about all the great theatrics of his speeches and the like, his views are not the views of a conservative. And a conservative will win the conservative nomination for the conservative party.”

Trump, Bush declared, is "not going to win Iowa." And if he doesn't win Iowa, he continued, he will have a difficult go in New Hampshire.

"And if he doesn’t win here, then the whole, the whole thing collapses," Bush predicted. "Where does he stand on national security? What does he think about the nuclear triad? How is he going to keep us safe? How is he going to create an economy where people’s income rise again? There’s no specifics there. There’s no there there, and once the bubble’s burst, I think you’re going to see dramatic changes."

Appearing on "Fox and Friends" earlier in the morning, Bush declined to get specific as to how he thought he would finish among New Hampshire primary voters.

"Better than expected," he said during an interview. "Better than expected. You tell me what the expectations are."

"Top three?" co-host Steve Doocy asked. "Better than expected. I don't know," Bush said, before touting his campaign's ground game in the early states, including New Hampshire. The remarks contrast with Bush's declaration that he would win the state in November.

"I honestly believe I’m going to win New Hampshire," he told WMUR at the time.