Thursday’s ceremony at the White House, organized in honor of Barbara Bush, will be marked by one absence that weighs more than all the other presences. George W. Bush, son of the former First Lady to whom a commemorative stamp has been dedicated, has chosen not to attend the event hosted by Melania Trump. According to administration sources cited by The Washington Post, the decision underscores the distance– symbolic as well as personal–between the former president and Donald Trump.
The event will take place in the East Room, where Melania, who returned to Washington specifically for the occasion, will unveil the new stamp issue. Several members of the Bush family are expected to attend, including Doro Bush Koch, the youngest daughter of the former first lady who was announced as one of the speakers, and Alice Yates, CEO of the George and Barbara Bush Foundation.
No comment has been issued by the former president’s spokesperson, but the chill between the two families is not new. George W. Bush has refrained from supporting Trump in all three of his presidential bids, offering only formal congratulations on his victories and attending both inaugurations, though he left the most recent one before the official luncheon. In 2020, he revealed that instead of voting for the incumbent president, he had written in the name of his former Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice.
Trump, for his part, has never held back criticism of the former Republican leader. After leaving the White House in 2021, he described Bush’s tenure as a “failed presidency” and accused him of dragging the country into the “quagmire of the Middle East without even winning.”
These remarks came in response to Bush’s own comments marking the 20th anniversary of 9/11, in which he warned of the country’s political decline, speaking of a “naked appeal to anger, fear, and resentment.”
