Former President George W. Bush has snubbed Melania Trump after declining to attend a ceremony at the White House honoring his late mother.
Bush and his wife, former First Lady Laura Bush, are not expected to attend a Thursday event at the White House’s East Room for the unveiling of a U.S. Postal Service stamp dedicated to the ex-president’s late mother, Barbara Bush, The Washington Post reports.
Dorothy Bush Koch, the former president’s younger sister, is expected to attend the ceremony along with other friends and family, including Alice Yates, the CEO of the George and Barbara Bush Foundation.
It is unclear why Bush is skipping the ceremony, but he has kept his distance from Trump despite being members of the same party.
Though Bush attended Trump’s inaugurations, he did not endorse Trump in his three presidential runs and did not vote for him in 2016 or 2020, instead writing in Condoleezza Rice, his former secretary of state and national security adviser.
Bush has also taken veiled swipes at Trump, saying that “so much of our politics has become a naked appeal to anger, fear, and resentment” in 2021 and condemned the January 6 attack on the Capitol.
Trump also took shots at Bush, calling his presidency “uninspiring” and blaming him for getting the U.S. “into the quicksand of the Middle East (and then not winning!)” according to the Post.
Barbara Bush also did not like Trump.
Before her death, Barbara said she no longer identified with the Republican Party, and in a diary entry, she said she viewed Trump as a “symbol of greed,” according to her biographer.
