At a summit in Abu Dhabi today Former president George W. Bush said “There’s pretty clear evidence that the Russians meddled in the 2016 election in the United States."
Bush added, “It’s problematic that a foreign nation is involved in our election system. Our democracy is only as good as people trust the results.”
Bush has been critical of Russia, slamming it for working to “exploit our country’s divisions.”
“The Russian government has made a project of turning Americans against each other,” Bush said during a forum in New York in October. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Bush’s remarks.
In an interview with NBC News this week, Jeanette Manfra, head of cybersecurity at the Department of Homeland Security, said Russians successfully infiltrated “an exceptionally small number” of voter registration rolls in 21 states. At the Abu Dhabi summit, Bush said Putin’s actions are motivated by his desire to regain “Soviet hegemony,” the Associated Press reported.
Separately, Bush also seemed to depart from Trump’s hard-line policies on immigration, saying that some immigrants are “willing to do jobs that Americans won’t do.”
“Americans don’t want to pick cotton at 105 degrees [Fahrenheit], but there are people who want [to] put food on their family’s tables and are willing to do that. We ought to say thank you and welcome,” Bush said.
He also criticized Trump’s decision to end an Obama-era program that allowed undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children to remain in the country and advocated for a permanent fix to keep them, according to the AP.
“America is their home,” Bush said, referring to recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, more commonly known as “dreamers.” |
