Former President George W. Bush has called the grand jury verdict on the death of Eric Garner “hard to understand” while lamenting that it was “sad” that race issues still divide the nation.
Speaking on CNN’s State of the Union” airing this Sunday, Bush said he watched the video of a New York City police officer putting Garner in a chokehold that led to his death,
according to The Huffington Post.
"I thought, how sad,” Bush said. “The verdict was hard to understand. I haven't seen all the details. But it's sad that race continues to play such an emotional, divisive part of life."
A grand jury in Staten Island on Wednesday ruled against indicting Officer Daniel Pantaleo in Garner's death, resulting in several protest rallies and marches across the city and a "die-in" at New York’s Grand Central Station.
Reflecting on the race riots he witnessed when he was "a kid in the '70s with cities being burned," Bush told CNN’s Candy Crowley, "I do think we've improved."
Bush also revealed that he recently spoke with former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice over dinner about U.S. race relations, and in particular the grand jury decision not to indict former police officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of unarmed teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri,
Politico reported.
"She just said you have to understand that there are a lot of black folks around that are incredibly more and more distrusting of law enforcement, which is a shame, because law enforcement's job is to protect everybody," he said.
When asked whether he thought his brother Jeb Bush, former governor of Florida, would be able to beat presumed Democrat frontrunner Hillary Clinton in a race for the White House, Bush said, “absolutely.”
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