Longtime Donald Trump associate Roger Stone defended the president’s recent comments about late first lady Barbara Bush, writing in an Instagram post that “she’s dead and he’s president — who won that one?”
Stone alleged in the social media post, which featured a photograph of Bush, that she once “berated me in a drunken tirade after the campaign I managed for Ronald Reagan beat her husband” in Republican primary races.
He then went on to defend Trump, who has been under criticism for hitting out at Bush after a new biography revealed that the late first lady was not a fan of his. Biographer Susan Page, who was given access to Bush’s diaries, extensively details the late first lady’s dislike for Trump dating back to the 1990s.
“She had a “countdown clock” for @realdonaldtrump presidency? Well she’s dead and he’s president — who won that one?” Stone wrote in the post. “Nasty, rude, vindictive, entitled , self-important – that’s the woman I had several unpleasant encounters with.”
In the biography, titled The Matriarch: Barbara Bush and the Making of a Dynasty, Bush said that she “probably” didn’t consider herself a Republican any longer due to the rise of Trump. According to the author, the comment was made two months before she died at the age of 92 in April 2018.
“Trump now means greed, selfishness and ugly. So sad,” the late first lady once wrote about the president in 1990, when he was a real estate mogul in New York.
Trump responded to the biography in an Oval Office interview with The Washington Times this week, during which he said that Bush had a right to be angry with him after the way he treated her sons.
“I have heard that she was nasty to me, but she should be. Look what I did to her sons,” Trump told the news outlet.
During the 2016 presidential race, Trump ridiculed former President George W. Bush and former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, who was running against Trump for the Republican Party’s nomination. Trump repeatedly referred to Jeb Bush as “low energy” and that he “desperately needed mommy to help him.”
Stone’s defense of the president comes as he is wrapped up in several legal troubles of his own. He was indicted in January on seven counts in connection to the special counsel investigation into Russian election meddling. The charges include lying to prosecutors, obstruction of justice and witness tampering. Stone has maintained his innocence and will go to trial in November.