Barbara Bush would ‘probably say no’ to being a Republican today: biographer

Barbara Bush said last year that she would “probably say no” to being a Republican today, according to the author of a new biography about the former first lady.

Bush, who died in April 2018 at the age of 92, reportedly made the claim to writer Susan Page for an upcoming book, “The Matriarch,” shortly before her death. 

{mosads}Page said she asked in October 2017 about whether Bush considered herself a member of the GOP and Bush said, “Yes.”

“When I asked her again four months later, in February 2018, she said, ‘I’d probably say no today,’ ”  the book states.

Page said on Wednesday in an appearance on CNN’s “New Day” that the former first lady made the admission with “some sadness.”

“She was not gleeful or triumphant about this. I think she was sorry about the direction her party had taken,” Page said.

CNN’s Alisyn Camerota noted that Bush’s change of heart came after Bush served as the matriarch to a Republican family dynasty that included two presidents.

“As the face of the Republican Party for decades and someone who worked for the Republican Party in a variety of roles, what a statement,” Page said.

When asked before her death by the author of a new book on Barbara Bush, the former first lady said she’d “probably say no today” to being Republican.

“She was not gleeful or triumphant about this. I think she was sorry about the direction her party had taken,” @SusanPage says pic.twitter.com/NRFB3sWxKS

— New Day (@NewDay) April 3, 2019

Page spent hours interviewing Bush in the final six months of her life.

The new biography details how the former first lady held a negative opinion of President Trump dating back decades before his 2016 election.

“The Trumps are a new word, both of them,” Bush said in her diary in 1990, according to Page. “Trump now means Greed, selfishness and ugly. So sad.”

The writer told CNN that Bush wrote in the name of her son Jeb Bush, who had lost the Republican nomination to Trump, on her ballot. 

“I could not vote for Trump or [Democratic nominee Hillary] Clinton,” she would later write in her diary, according to Page.

Barbara Bush reportedly also blamed Trump for what she called her “heart attack” in 2016, the book details. 

“It wasn’t technically a heart attack, though she called it that,” Page wrote. “It was a crisis in her long battle with congestive heart failure and chronic pulmonary disease that hit her like a sledgehammer one day in June 2016,” when Trump secured the Republican presidential nomination after repeatedly ridiculing her son.

An ambulance was called and Bush was taken to the hospital, Page wrote.

“The tumultuous presidential campaign in general and Trump’s ridicule of son Jeb Bush in particular had riled her,” Page wrote. ” ‘Angst,’ she told me.”