George W. Bush knows he looked a bit ridiculous battling a rain poncho in bad weather on Donald Trump’s inauguration day.
“I wish I got the rain poncho on a little more cleanly,” said the former president, referring to his epic struggle with the see-through rain gear.
“My daughters were aghast: ‘Dad, you’re a national tweet sensation. You’re trending,’ or whatever the words are,” he added. “I said, ‘I don’t know what the heck that means.’ But then I saw the pictures and I can see why I was trending.”
Bush came clean about the poncho in an interview Thursday with NPR’s “Morning Edition” Thursday. But one thing he was foggy about was his reported comment that President Trump’s inauguration was “some weird shit.”
“If I said it, I don’t remember it,” Bush said.
He said was glad he attended the inauguration, despite fissures in the Republican Party over Trump (Bush, his wife, Laura Bush, and his father, former President George H.W. Bush did not vote for Trump).
“You know, it’s a really beautiful experience to watch a peaceful transfer of power,” Bush said.
However, he is fiercely against the current policy of deporting undocumented immigrants. Bush spoke out on the issue last month and raised it again during his NPR interview.
“Let’s discuss the issue of people here illegally. What are the options? Do nothing?” he said. “My judgment is that there needs to be a way for somebody to be able to get in line to become a citizen so long as they meet certain criteria.”
As for Mexico, he told NPR it’s “very important” for the U.S. to “recognize the importance” of the country and have a relationship with the nation. “We want Mexico to succeed,” Bush said. “It’s in our national interest they succeed.”
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