Report: Rush Sees Strategy In Trump Outbursts

As Donald J. Trump on Monday avoided repeating his recent debate claim that the George W. Bush administration had “lied” in the buildup to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh said that Trump had used the language of Democrats to attack the former president.

Rush Limbaugh

On his radio show on Monday afternoon, Mr. Limbaugh theorized that Mr. Trump might be deploying a strategy to turn out Democrats and independents in a state with an open primary.

“The things that Trump said and did Saturday night came out of nowhere,” Mr. Limbaugh said.

“They didn’t make any sense. Here we are in a Republican primary, and Donald Trump, out of the blue, starts blaming the Bush family for 9/11, for knowing that the intelligence was made up, that there never were any weapons of mass destruction, and they knew it, Trump said.”

The NY Times reports Trump, in a news conference on Monday, stood by his comments about the World Trade Center falling down during Mr. Bush’s presidency. But he pointedly declined to repeat his debate remark that “they lied,” and he said he was unwilling to assign blame to Mr. Bush.

Mr. Limbaugh added: “Michael Moore doesn’t even say that. The World Trade Center came down when George W. Bush was president so don’t anybody tell me, Trump said, he kept us safe. He jumped all over the Bush family and the Iraq war and claimed that he was on record way, way back as always being opposed to the Iraq war, that it was going to muddy up the Middle East and cause a quagmire. ”

But “nobody can find any record of Trump having opposed the Iraq war in 2001, 2002,” Mr. Limbaugh said. He also raised questions about Mr. Trump defending the work of Planned Parenthood on everything other than abortion.