The late Barbara Bush blamed her heart problems on President Trump, according to an upcoming book delving into her final six months of life.
Although Bush didn’t technically have a heart attack, build up from congestive heart failure and chronic pulmonary disease all hit in June 2016, which she blamed on “angst” from the presidential campaign and Trump’s ridicule of her son Jeb Bush, according to “The Matriarch: Barbara Bush and the Making of an American Dynasty.”
“Jeb said, ‘Mom, don’t worry about things you can’t do anything about,’” Barbara Bush told Susan Page, the author of the book and Washington Bureau chief of USA Today. “He’s right. Just do good, make life better for someone else.”
In October 2017 Bush said she still considered herself a Republican, but when asked the same question later into Trump’s presidency in February 2018, she said, “I’d probably say no today.”
Bush felt that she no longer aligned with the party in her final months as Trump continued to resonate with other Republicans.
The matriarch of the Bush family also kept a countdown clock that showed the remainder of Trump’s term that stayed by her side until the day she died.
A friend gave her the red, white, and blue digital clock that showed the days, hours, minutes, and seconds that remained in Trump’s term as president — it was placed on a table in her bedroom next to a chair where she would often sit.
Bush died April 17, 2018, in Houston, Texas. She was 92 years old.
