'Bigotry seems emboldened': George W. Bush delivers speech seen as rebuke to Trump

Former President George W. Bush never mentioned his name but delivered what sounded like a sustained rebuke to President Donald Trump on Thursday, decrying nationalism, protectionism and the coarsening of public debate while calling for a robust response to Russian interference in American democracy.

In a speech in New York, Bush defended free trade, globalization and immigration even as Trump seeks to raise barriers to international commerce and newcomers from overseas. He condemned the "casual cruelty" he sees in public discourse and denounced white supremacy two months after Trump suggested that "both sides" were to blame at a neo-Nazi rally that turned violent in Virginia.

"We've seen nationalism distorted into nativism, forgotten the dynamism that immigration has always brought to America," Bush said. "We see a fading confidence in the value of free markets and international trade, forgetting that conflict, instability and poverty follow in the wake of protectionism. We've seen the return of isolationist sentiments, forgetting that American security is directly threatened by the chaos and despair of distant places."

The former president said that these afflictions have created a crisis of confidence in the United States that has endangered its historic ideals. "In all these ways, we need to recall and recover our own identity," he said. "Americans have great advantage. To renew our country we only need to remember our values."

"Bigotry seems emboldened. Our politics seems more vulnerable to conspiracy theories and outright fabrication," Bush said.

Bush addressed these issues at a bipartisan conference that his presidential center sponsored in New York to promote democracy and freedom. Since leaving office in January 2009, he has largely sought to avoid engaging in current-day political struggles, even as he promotes issues he has long cared about like the spread of democracy around the world.

His speech on Thursday seemed a clear rejoinder to Trump. Asked as he left the hall whether his message would be heard in the White House, Bush smiled, nodded slightly and said, "I think it will."

Trump beat former Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida for the Republican presidential nomination last year. Neither the former president nor his father, former President George Bush, voted for Trump last November. But advisers said the younger George Bush has been deeply troubled by the state of the national debate under a president who routinely demonizes his adversaries on Twitter.

"Bullying and prejudice in our public life sets a national tone, provides permission for cruelty and bigotry and compromises the moral education of children," Bush said. "The only way to pass along civic values is to first live up to them."

Bush, who issued a statement with his father condemning white supremacists after the violence in Charlottesville, Va., in August, returned to the theme. "Bigotry or white supremacy in any form is blasphemy against the American creed," he said.

The conference also featured a panel with two former secretaries of state, Condoleezza Rice and Madeleine Albright, joining Nikki Haley, Trump's ambassador to the United Nations.

Rice, who served under Bush, and Albright, who served under President Bill Clinton, seemed to urge Haley to press the Trump administration to rethink its cuts to the State Department budget and its approach to the U.N., to protect rather than attack the media and to make a stronger response to Russian meddling.

Rice and Albright pressed Haley and the administration to take Russia's interference in last year's election more seriously. Rice, a longtime Russia scholar, said that past Soviet disinformation campaigns were "clumsy," but last year's effort was "sophisticated."

That is one area where Haley has been in agreement, even though she is working for a president who derides the "Russia story" as a "hoax."

"The Russians, God bless them, they're saying, 'Why are Americans anti-Russian and why have we done the sanctions?' " Haley said. "Well, don't interfere in our elections and we won't be anti-Russian."

Bush echoed that in his own speech. "America has experienced a sustained attempt by a hostile power to feed and exploit our country's divisions," he said. "According to our intelligence services, the Russian government has made a project of turning Americans against each other. This effort is broad, systemic and stealthy." He added: "We must secure our electoral infrastructure and protect our election system from subversion."