Trump is right about Bush

Even if delivered by a fool, it was nice to hear someone of some political stature express the truth about former President George W. Bush.

I'm not in the habit of quoting someone I've long loathed, but former President Donald Trump was on to something when he said in a Monday statement that Bush had "a failed and uninspiring presidency" and shouldn't be "lecturing" Americans about the threat posed by domestic terrorism. Trump was responding to a thinly veiled shot made by Bush towards the Trump-idolizing insurrectionists during a speech at the Flight 93 National Memorial in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, on Saturday to mark the 20th anniversary of 9/11. Without explicitly naming Trump supporters that stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, Bush compared "violent extremists at home" to the terrorists who had hijacked planes on Sept. 11, 2001, and crashed them in New York City, Arlington, and Shanksville, killing nearly 3,000 people.

"There is little cultural overlap between violent extremists abroad and violent extremists at home," Bush explained. "But in their disdain for pluralism, in their disregard for human life, in their determination to defile national symbols — they are children of the same foul spirit, and it is our continuing duty to confront them."

This was enough to get Trump, presumably seething for attention anyway, to attack Bush via dictated statement.

"He shouldn't be lecturing us about anything," Trump said. "The World Trade Center came down during his watch. Bush led a failed and uninspiring presidency. He shouldn't be lecturing anybody!"

Multiple things can be true at once. Trump was a terrible president. He is also correct that Bush was a terrible president, too.

Trump is also not wrong to highlight that the terrorist attacks happened on Bush's watch. It's a fact too many folks seem to forget. That, coupled with the two disastrous wars he started in response to 9/11, should have resulted in Bush's invitation to any commemorative event being rescinded. But our media tends to be forgetful. As much coverage as the pullout of Afghanistan recently received, it still boggles the mind that so many Bush administration alums and military leaders of the era were given free reign to opine on Biden's apparent faults without even acknowledging they created the problems in the first place.