Without Saying ‘Trump,’ Bush and Obama Deliver Implicit Rebukes<br />Neither the former president nor his father, former President George Bush, voted for Mr. Trump,<br />and the two issued a joint statement in August denouncing white supremacists after the violence in Charlottesville, Va., which Mr. Trump blamed on “both sides.”<br />The younger Mr. Bush seemed to return to that on Thursday.<br />Asked by a reporter as he left the hall whether his message would be heard in the<br />White House, Mr. Bush smiled, nodded slightly and said, “I think it will.”<br />In his speech, the former president lamented that “bigotry seems emboldened”<br />and “our politics seems more vulnerable to conspiracy theories and outright fabrication.”<br />Pointing a finger at the nation’s leaders, he said, “We know<br />that when we lose sight of our ideals, it is not democracy that has failed; it the failure of those charged with preserving and protecting democracy.”<br />He acknowledged public discontent.
