Jeb Bush Defends Dick Cheney After Bush 41's Criticism Of Former President George W Bush's Administration

A new biography of former President George H.W. Bush may show that the 41^st president wasn’t completely sold on the political choices made by his son following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, but neither of his two sons are completely in-step with their father. Former President George W. Bush and presidential hopeful Jeb Bush both supported former Vice President Dick Cheney on Thursday, though their father was critical of him in his new memoir.

“I am proud to have served with Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld,” George W. Bush said of his White House team in a statement. Rumsfeld served as George W. Bush’s Defense Secretary. “Dick Cheney did a superb job as Vice President, and I was fortunate to have him by my side throughout my presidency.”

Weighing in to an NBC reporter, Jeb Bush said that Cheney “served my brother well as vice president.”

The elder Bush’s criticism of Cheney is in a new biography written Pulitzer Prize winner Jon Meacham, who was allowed rare access to the former president. In the biography, George H.W. Bush called Cheney an “iron-ass” and said Rumsfeld was “an arrogant fellow.”

The Bush family is notoriously close, and Jeb Bush has been defensive of his older brother on the 2016 campaign trail. During the second Republican debate in September, he defended George W. Bush’s chosen foreign policy advisors – many of whom served for one or both of the Bushes who were in the Oval Office – and said that his brother kept the United States safe during his eight years. Before that, he defended his George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq, saying that he would have invaded with the same information available at the time. He later walked back on those comments and said he wouldn’t have gone in to Iraq knowing what we know now.

Rumsfeld didn’t get Jeb Bush’s expressed support Thursday, but he defended himself. He sent a statement to NBC saying “Bush [senior] is getting up in the years and misjudges [President George W. Bush], who I found made his own decisions.”