Jeb Bush: Donald Trump ‘Is a Bully’

CUOMO: “Let me ask you something. People who know you say if you were in trouble, Jeb is a guy that you want on your side. And when you have come across in these debates, you come across as, hey, there’s a decorum here, I’m not going to sink to the level. For some it is played as a weakness. Last night when he said am I talking or are you talking? You took a different take. What goes through your head and heart in processing how to respond to Donald Trump?"
BUSH: “Great question. First of all, it’s not really a debate. It’s a performance. You have to take the moment to be able to say what you want to say rather than answer the question. I was brought up in a family where you, you know, someone asked you a question, you answer it. You'vegot to avoid -- I mean, really you have to be respectful of the question but get to the point you want to make. And in the case of Donald Trump, he’s a bully. Look, I mean, you guys interviewhim all the time. He has his way. And to push up — post up against him a little bit and push back, you get a sense of -- he’s not quite all in command.”
CUOMO: “Does he worry you at all in those moments, that he's going to be better than me? What’s emotionally going through —“
BUSH: “I don't know. There’s not enough time to be -- to think about it in that way, in an abstract way. You’re in the middle of it and you go at it. What brothers me is that our party will win if we have a hopeful optimistic message on foreign policy, if we have a message that believes in America’s exceptionalism. I don’t think he does. I think he views the world in negative, pessimistic terms. In essence, he is the mirror image of Barack Obama in a strange way that they both have competing forms of pessimism and they express it in clearly different ways. But we need to have a hopeful optimistic message, believing in the strength of our country and how we keep ourselves safe by projecting American leadership in the world. And the debate last night, I think brought some clarity to that.”