Norfolk, Va.
“We’re America, damn it!”
So proclaimed the famously “low-energy” Jeb Bush at the local Veterans of Foreign Wars hall Friday morning. That rallying cry, Bush said, is how past generations have greeted the challenges America has faced, and it embodies the spirit he says he wants to reignite in the country. “We have to restore America’s greatness by fixing the things that make it hard for people to rise up in this country,” Bush said.
“Restore America’s greatness”? The casually deployed swear word? At one point, Bush even railed against the dangers of “political correctness.” The signs all read “Jeb!” but Donald Trump was an undeniable presence at Bush’s town hall in the Hampton Roads region of Virginia.
One questioner obliquely referenced Trump as “the guy in the red hat,” asking how the Republican party can tap into “the silent majority” and “take [on] some of these issues” Trump has raised.
Bush, looking trim in a dark gray suit and plaid shirt, nodded his head deferentially to the Donald before answering.
“Here’s a guy, larger than life, it’s all about him. I wake up thinking, ‘Wow, people are really struggling, suffering,’” Bush said. “That’s what I focus on, that’s what I think about, how do we make sure that people can be lifted up. For him, it’s all about him. But he’s tapped into, because he’s so different than people in public life, he’s tapped into this anger and angst that Washington’s not working. Totally get it, and I respect the fact that, look, this guy’s the frontrunner. He should be treated like a frontrunner, not like some kind of alternative universe to the political system.”
It was a call for the media and voters to take serious Trump’s deviations from the GOP and lack of a conservative record. But even Bush himself is treating the Donald like the frontrunner. The New York Times reported last week the former Florida governor has entered a “new, more combative phase of his campaign” as Trump’s rise in the polls has not abated. “There’s a big difference between Donald Trump and me,” Bush said in New Hampshire last week, according to the Times. “I’m a proven conservative with a record. He isn’t.”
Bush kept the theme going in Virginia, noting Trump’s past support for a single-payer health-care system, a new tax on assets, and even partial-birth abortion. “I’ve never met someone who actually had that view and said it publicly,” Bush said of partial-birth abortion. He was refering to a 1999 appearance by Trump on NBC’s Meet the Press, when the real-estate mogul told host Tim Russert he was “very pro-choice” and said he did not support the partial-birth-abortion ban then being debated in Congress. The ban ultimately passed and was signed into law.
Bush also called Trump’s plan to secure the southern border and deport the several million illegal immigrants currently in the country “not a conservative proposal.”
“It’s going to cost hundreds of billions of dollars, violate civil liberties, challenge our freedom in so many ways,” Bush said.
On hand in Norfolk to assist Bush in criticizing Trump was Eric Cantor, the former majority leader in the U.S. House who lost his Republican primary last year. Cantor, who was just named one of Bush’s Virginia campaign co-chairs, called Bush a “results-oriented leader.”
“He talks about doing, and he does,” Cantor said of Bush. “Mr. Trump is all about talk.”
Both Bush and Cantor noted the positive aspects of Trump’s influence on the race, including the excitement the reality TV star has brought to the process. Another of Bush’s co-chairs present at the event, John H. Hager, said there is a lesson Trump has for Bush and the other GOP candidates. “You have to energize the electorate,” said Hager, who is the former lieutenant governor and also an in-law of the Bush clan; his son, Henry, is married to Jeb Bush’s niece Jenna, daughter of President George W. Bush.
Cantor noted that while there are “serious issues” facing the country, the attention of the media and the voters has been elsewhere. “There’s been so much focus on Donald Trump’s hair or some kind of sidetracked issue,” he said.
So what about one issue Trump has raised in recent days—closing the loophole in the tax code for what’s known as carried interest? In interviews, Trump has said hedge fund managers and other Wall Street types don’t pay taxes on a significant amount of money they earn from their share of their investments. That’s the “carried interest,” and a part of the code allows investment-fund managers to pay at a lower capital-gains tax rate on what is essentially their commission. Advocates for closing the loophole would have that money taxed at the higher rate as general income, something Wall Street interests have vehemently opposed.
“They’re paying nothing and it’s ridiculous,” Trump said. “The hedge fund guys didn’t build this country. These are guys that shift paper around and they get lucky.”
Bush did not formally meet with reporters following his event, but THE WEEKLY STANDARD asked him as he left the building about his thoughts on closing that loophole. “The carried-interest loophole?” Bush said over his shoulder. “Ask me on September 9.” That, Bush said, is when he plans on releasing his tax-reform proposal.
Cantor, who has joined a Wall Street firm since leaving Congress, also did not say what, if anything, should be done about this issue Trump (and others, including Barack Obama) have raised.
“I know that Jeb Bush is going to come out with a tax-reform proposal in the next couple weeks or months, and we’ll see how that looks,” Cantor said. “But I can tell you that anything that we can do that can create an environment for growth in our economy so that it can spread to all corners of our country and not just a selected few in New York City or Silicon Valley or anywhere else. Everyone should be sharing in this prosperity.”
While it’s currently unclear if Bush will propose closing this loophole, if it somehow pops up in his forthcoming tax plan, there will be one person to thank for raising the issue on the Republican side: the inescapable Donald Trump.
