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Republican presidential contender Jeb Bush called Donald Trump's candidacy a "phenomenon," and said his outspoken rival has "appealed to people's anger" as he has skyrocketed to the top of the polls. "I was surprised that Donald Trump has surged. I think he's captured the deep frustration that people feel," Bush told NBC News' Lester Holt in an exclusive interview on Friday. Trump — who kicked off his campaign with controversial comments accusing Mexico of sending its rapists and murderers to the U.S. — has a large lead over the GOP presidential field, a Quinnipiac poll released Thursday showed. "I get...

MOTHER OF SON MURDERED BY ILLEGAL ALIEN SLAMS SANCTUARY CITIES, POLITICIANS: ‘YOUR SILENCE SPEAKS VOLUMES’ At a Tuesday Senate hearing dedicated to the families who lost loved ones thanks to illegal aliens, Laura Wilkerson gave testimony on her youngest son Joshua’s horrific death while some in the silent audience wept. Wilkerson called on Congress to place American lives and interests over foreigners, especially those illegally living in the country. During the hearing, titled “Oversight of the Administration’s Misdirected Immigration Enforcement Policies: Examining the Impact on Public Safety and Honoring the Victims,” Wilkerson broke from her written testimony to deliver a...

KENNEBUNKPORT, Maine — A banner in the town square says, “Happy 90th Barbara Bush.” Postcards read “Kennebunkport: 2 presidents, 1 town.” A local gift shop is already selling unofficial “Jeb Bush 2016” magnets. In this coastal hamlet made famous by George H.W. Bush and his cigarette boat, it is hard to escape the Bush family — but Jeb Bush is trying very hard to do so. After festivities this weekend to celebrate his mother’s 90th birthday, Bush will jet overseas for a foreign-policy tour and then launch his 2016 presidential campaign 1,500 miles to the south in Miami. The iconic...

Jeb Bush felt the welcoming embrace of Miami on Monday as he tried to put behind him a difficult week of campaigning without yet being a presidential candidate. His political action committee, Right to Rise, held a political fund-raiser in the overwhelmingly Hispanic, working-class suburb of Sweetwater, where the former Florida Republican governor was greeted as a old friend in need of a little TLC. "Aquí está la vieja guardia -- no tan vieja," Bush joked in Spanish after being introduced by former U.S. Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart.

Jeb Bush said in an interview that he would not immediately move to repeal President Obama’s executive order on immigration — suggesting he would instead wait for a new law to be passed addressing the matter. In an interview with Megyn Kelly that is to be shown Monday night on Fox News, Mr. Bush said that rather than overturning the order, he believed in “passing meaningful reform of immigration and make it part of it.” The president’s executive order seeks to shield millions of undocumented immigrants from deportation. Most presidential candidates in the Republican field either oppose Mr. Obama’s order...

If National Review editor Rich Lowry was looking for compromise on immigration from Republican Jeb Bush, he’s still looking. According to NR, Bush “and Lowry tussled over immigration policy and tax pledges.” Jeb wasn’t even willing to take the seemingly easy out of opting to secure the border first. One is left to wonder what the unemployed, “younger, more dynamic people” of Baltimore and other areas might think of Jeb’s reasoning.

Jeb Bush is playing up his Hispanic side: On Sunday in Miami Beach he dined with Zeus Rodriguez, president of Hispanics for School Choice in Wisconsin. Rodriguez won a lunch with Jeb contest, Bush’s campaign in waiting said. On Tuesday in Puerto Rico, Bush spoke in English and Spanish and talked about immigration. As the Washington Post reported, Bush “reiterated his support for Puerto Rican statehood and said that the next president should help make Puerto Rico a state if residents vote to do so. He reminded the crowd that he knows “the power of the immigrant experience,” because “I...

Jeb Bush jolted his prospective rivals for the Republican presidential nomination last winter when he dived with unexpected aggressiveness into the 2016 campaign. Few of them seem to be quaking now. The former Florida governor is still the biggest name in the GOP field, with a fundraising network unmatched by any of the others. But Bush’s considerable assets so far have done little to reshape the early polls or keep others out of the race. If anything, it’s the opposite. Bush acknowledged all this when he was in New Hampshire a week ago. Noting his strong establishment support, one voter,...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK) Columnist Charles Krauthammer said that Jeb Bush “is lagging” and “should not be in single digits” on Friday’s “Special Report” on the Fox News Channel. During the show’s Friday candidate casino segment where the panelists bet $100 of fictional money on presidential candidates, Krauthammer put $40 on Marco Rubio to win the GOP nomination, $25 on Bush, $20 on Scott Walker, $5 on Ted Cruz and the remaining $10 on wine, women, and song. He explained, “I’m increasing my investment in Rubio. I’m feeling vindicated and somewhat cocky, having been in on the deal very early when he was...

Cites ‘unorthodox’ views, such as support Common Core and immigration reform, as strength Jeb Bush said he would not make the same mistakes as Mitt Romney during a private event in New York on Thursday, saying the 2012 Republican nominee was unable to connect with voters in a genuine way. “[Romney] made it about a referendum on the president’s policies rather than about himself. He didn’t show his heart,” said the former governor of Florida. “He didn’t send a signal that he cared about people, when he did.” -snip- On immigration, he said he backs “earned legalized status.” “You would...

Jeb Bush says that the prospective confirmation of attorney general nominee Loretta Lynch “sounds to me like a victory” because “getting rid of” current Attorney General Eric Holder has “gotta be a win.” The former governor of Florida said last week that President Barack Obama deserves the opportunity to have the team he wants. He also took shots at Holder then, saying that Republicans should consider that the longer they take to confirm Lynch, the longer he will be in office. “I said that they should have a vote,” Bush told radio show host Michael Medved in an interview Tuesday....

In 2012, Mitt Romney was the out-of-touch establishment Republican who sparked a right-wing primary backlash. A New Hampshire GOP event this weekend suggests the storyline could play out again with Jeb Bush. In New Hampshire this weekend, there was already the scent of it. Perhaps not overpowering yet, but unmistakable and very familiar. "I'm sick and tired of mushy, wishy-washy conservatives," one attendee of a Republican gathering for potential presidential candidates in New Hampshire told The Boston Herald. For good measure, she also made Saturday's headlines by suggesting that the still-awfully-far-away Republican presidential primary season would be a "coronation" because...

Only yesterday Jeb Bush was the Republican flavor of the week, the favorite of the Republican establishment, those wonderful folks who yearn for a nice man who oozes political propriety and respectability. Establishment Republicans — Rockefeller Republicans, they were once called — live in dread of frightening the horses. They’re something like the young man sent off to college with his mother’s entreaty to remember his raising ringing in his ears: “Remember, son, what you have been taught, go to church, say your prayers, avoid worldly temptations, stay away from loose women, and pay no attention to those who mock...

Jeb Bush says he doesn’t want a “coronation,” and New Hampshire voters are making sure he gets his wish. Facing an audience of skeptical activists at a pivotal GOP gathering, the former Florida governor tried to assure voters he’s a real conservative in a somewhat rocky return to the campaign trail here. “My record’s a conservative record,” Bush said in response to a question at a nationally watched gathering of GOP activists attended by nearly all of the party’s presidential hopefuls. “It’s not a Republican-in-name-only record. ... It’s an ‘I’m not kidding’ conservative one.” Bush had just finished his stump...

Jeb fires hot sauce at Hillary, saying 'I don't need to go to Chipotle' – his wife is Mexican and they cook their own Jeb Bush doesn't need to follow Hillary Clinton into a campaign-stop Chipotle: he and his Mexican wife can cook their own burritos, thank you very much. At a campaign event in New Hampshire, the presumptive Republican presidential front-runner told a capacity crowd that 'we normally cook our own food, my own Mexican food, at home. It's pretty good.' 'I actually cook it at home. I don’t need to go to Chipotle,' Bush said at a Republican...

While Sen. Rand Paul (R., Ky.) was formally launching his 2016 presidential campaign Tuesday, still-not-a-candidate Jeb Bush was in Colorado, where he called for privatizing some parts of veterans’ health care. Mr. Bush, sitting in front of an untouched breakfast at an IHOP in Colorado Springs, told a group of veterans that he favors transferring some elements of veterans’ care to private hospitals from government-run Veterans Affairs facilities. “This is where I think empowering people with the equivalent of a voucher that gives you the same economic benefit of receiving care inside of a clinic or a hospital,” Mr. Bush...

Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush called on Congress to pass bipartisan comprehensive amnesty legislation after President Barack Obama unilaterally granted nearly five million illegal immigrants executive amnesty on Thursday.

The former Florida governor quietly met with Wall Street executives on Monday in a Manhattan bank to lay down the necessary ground work for a run by lining up donors. It was his fifth visit to the city since June.

Senator John McCain (R., Ariz.) touted former governor Jeb Bush (R., Fla.) as a potential contender in the 2016 presidential elections while discussing the merits of nominating a governor as opposed to a senator. “I think that governors who are successful obviously have a cachet that is probably helpful to them, particularly, since the Congress is held in low esteem,” McCain tells National Review Online. “I think there will be some who are very competitive, including Jeb Bush if he decides to run.” McCain says he hadn’t decided to back Bush. “I keep hearing that he may be considering a...

Former Florida governor Jeb Bush is urging Congress not to use the current crisis on the southwestern border as an "excuse" for not passing comprehensive immigration reform. Bush and Clint Bolick, co-authors of a 2013 book on immigration, write in a Wall Street Journal op-ed published Wednesday evening that surge of Central American children crossing the border illegally should not be a reason for House Republicans to refuse to pass immigration reform.