Former first lady Laura Bush declined to say Thursday if she would back Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump if he wins the GOP nomination.
“I’m not going to answer,” Bush told USA Today‘s Susan Page when asked. She added, “don’t ask that.”
The former first lady and her husband, former President George W. Bush have remained largely out of the political scene since leaving office in 2009, with the exception of campaigning for former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush earlier this year prior to the South Carolina primary.
“We got off the sidelines for Jeb,” Bush told Page about their political involvement post-presidency. “He was our candidate.”
Bush, who discussed the introduction she wrote for a new book, did make clear that she disagrees with Trump on his plan to ban entrance of Muslims into the United States, and with his assertion that Islam as a whole “hates” the United States.
“This is what I want Americans to remember, what our real values are,” Bush said. “[O]ne of the reasons we’re a country is because we believe in freedom of religion. We believe that people can be religious, they can choose any religion they want to, or they can not worship if they didn’t want to. We don’t have any religious test in the United States, and that’s what we need to remember.”
