Former US President George W. Bush, a Republican, appears reluctant to endorse his party's presidential candidate, Donald Trump, in the November presidential election.
According ReutersThe 43rd president does not plan to make any statement or say how he or his wife Laura will vote in the presidential election, a spokesman said Saturday.
Bush will not be joining his former vice president Dick Cheney, who said last week he would vote for Democrat Kamala Harris instead of Republican Trump, crossing party lines.
“He retired from presidential politics many years ago,” said the spokesman, who did not want to be identified.
Cheney, 83, who served as vice president under Bush, 78, from 2001 to 2009, said Friday that “in the 248-year history of our nation, there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump.”
Cheney's daughter, Trump's leading critic and former Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney, has also called on fellow conservatives to vote for Harris in November. The Independent reported.
“Dick Cheney is voting for Kamala Harris,” the former vice president's daughter said Friday at the Texas Tribune Festival. “If you think about the moment we're in and how serious it is, my father believes — and he's said this publicly — that there's never been an individual in our country who poses as grave a threat to our democracy as Donald Trump.”
Following the endorsements from Cheney and her daughter, Harris said the father-daughter duo were “brave” for putting country before political party.
Additionally, Mike Pence, who served as Trump's vice president for four years, has said he will not endorse his former boss, but has not endorsed Harris.
Harris, 59, and her running mate Tim Walz, 60, have courted Republicans who refuse to vote for Trump, and Harris said in an interview with CNN that she would consider appointing a Republican to her Cabinet.
After Trump won the presidential election against Hillary Clinton in 2016, Bush attended his inauguration but reportedly called his speech “weird shit.”
However, a spokesman at the time said Bush and his wife did not vote for either Trump or Clinton. He also refused to endorse Joe Biden or Trump in 2020.
Harris' campaign highlighted in a press release Sunday the amount of support the vice president has received from Republicans.
With nearly two months to go until the presidential election, Harris' campaign is reporting strong support from 230 other Bush, John McCain and Mitt Romney alumni.
Despite her efforts to appeal to voters in key swing states, a recent New York Times-Siena College poll suggests Harris may face an uphill battle.
The poll shows Trump leading Harris 48% to 47%, with voters perceiving the Republican candidate as closer to the center compared to the vice president, who is seen as too liberal or progressive, according to the survey.
Harris and Trump will face off in their highly anticipated first debate, which will be hosted by ABC in Pittsburgh on Tuesday night.
