Former President George W. Bush won’t endorse a candidate in this year’s presidential election.
His office told NBC News and Reuters that Bush also won’t reveal how he or his wife, Laura, will vote this November.
“President Bush retired from presidential politics years ago,” his office told NBC News.
A couple of days ago, Bush’s vice president, Dick Cheney, announced that he would cross party lines and support Democratic nominee Kamala Harris. Cheney called the Republican nominee, Donald Trump, a “threat to our republic.”
“In our nation’s 248-year history, there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump,” Cheney said in a statement. “He tried to steal the last election using lies and violence to keep himself in power after the voters had rejected him. He can never be trusted with power again.”
Cheney, who joined his daughter, former Rep. Liz Cheney, in advocating for Harris over Trump, said he was putting “country above partisanship.”
As for Bush, People magazine reported in 2021 that he didn’t vote for either Trump or President Joe Biden in the last election. Bush wrote in former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s name instead, according to the interview with People.
Bush won’t be endorsing Harris, but some of his former staffers have done just that.
Over 200 Republicans who worked for the last two Republican presidents, before Trump, and the last two Republican presidential nominees signed onto an open letter endorsing Harris to be president.
The Republicans signing onto a letter lending their support to Harris included people who worked for Presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush as well as those who worked for the late Sen. John McCain and Sen. Mitt Romney, the GOP nominees in 2008 and 2012.
The Republicans in the letter noted that many of them also spoke out in 2020 against reelecting Trump.
“We made those announcements months before lies about a stolen election became everyday talking points and six months before Trump incited an insurrection, cheering on a mob of sore losers and sycophants as they tried to use force to overturn the will of the American public. We reunite today, joined by new George H.W. Bush alumni, to reinforce our 2020 statements and, for the first time, jointly declare that we’re voting for Vice President Kamala Harris and Gov. Tim Walz this November,” part of the letter reads. “Of course, we have plenty of honest, ideological disagreements with Vice President Harris and Gov. Walz. That’s to be expected. The alternative, however, is simply untenable.”
And multiple Republicans joined Democrats on stage at their convention in August to endorse Harris.
One of them, former Trump White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham, told the DNC crowd that she was throwing her support behind Harris “because I love my country more than my party.”
Meanwhile, former Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard and former Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have endorsed Trump.