In an interview on MSNBC with Nicolle Wallace, Jeb blames Pope Francis for stealing the news cycle and causing his loss in the South Carolina primary.
Transcript via Mediaite:
Bush: The Pope intervening in American politics didn’t help.
Wallace: You’re Catholic, blaming the Pope.
Bush: No, no. I’m not blaming. Talking about, basically, open borders at a time with the whole Trump phenomenon was to build a wall and make Mexico pay for it. he goes to the border for a massive mass, and he had every right to preach the gospel there, I don’t think he should be intervening, I don’t think he understood he was intervening in our political affairs. That generated a lot of news and stopped the momentum.
Wallace: By how?
Bush: The news cycle was dominated by that. Trump, to his credit, was very smart at exploiting these kind of opportunities. He’s a master at understanding how the media works more than anybody I’ve ever seen in politics, kudos for him for kind of creating the environment and then manipulating the environment to his effect.
I guess Jeb can never ever face the whole failure of his brother's administration as the main cause for his loss. He'll spend the rest of his life using complicated parsing, (including the Pope in the news cycle, really?) to justify why he never achieved the Presidency.
