Donald Trump's promises for a wall at the Mexican border and a ban on Muslims are all "like an alternative universe he created," when the "reality is that's not going to happen," former GOP presidential candidate Jeb Bush says in an exclusive interview airing on MSNBC Monday night.
"Trump, you know, to his credit was very smart at exploiting these kind of opportunities," Bush tells MSNBC correspondent Nicolle Wallace, who served as communications director for former President George W. Bush, in the interview which is being billed by MSNBC as a "conversation."
"He's a master at understanding how the media works, more than anybody I've ever seen in politics," Bush tells Wallace in a clip played on
MSNBC's "Andrea Mitchell Reports" program. "Kudos for him for kind of creating the environment and then manipulating it ... people are going to be deeply frustrated and the divides will grow in our country. And this extraordinary country, still, the greatest country on the face of the Earth, will continue to stagger instead of soar. And that's the heartbreaking part of this; I think people are really going to feel betrayed."
No representatives from the Bush family plan to attend the Republican National Convention, Mitchell noted Monday. Wallace, who spoke with the former Florida governor a few doors down from the family's compound in Kennebunkport, Maine, said it was striking that it is "abundantly clear to Jeb Bush that the party was in the mood for something very different."
Further, she said, Bush sees his loss to Trump differently than he does his own loss the first time he ran for governor, or his father's loss in 1992.
"He really sees his candidacy and, you know, he sees himself, that he was the wrong man at the wrong moment for the Republican Party," Wallace said. "He [said] he is 'temporarily dead,' which I thought was just stunning admission from someone who tried to make it ... he ran a campaign on ideas and ran into a brick wall, named Donald Trump."
The Bush/Wallace interview will air at 10 p.m. Monday in a special hour anchored by Rachel Maddow and Brian Williams.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.