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Donald Trump didn’t hold back in Monday comments reacting to former President George W. Bush’s speech marking the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Bush lamented the “malign force” of a nation divided and seemed to put events of the tail-end of the Trump presidency center stage. 

Bush spoke at the United Airlines Flight 93 memorial service on Saturday in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Filled merely with patriotic nostalgia, noticeably absent was even a hint of regret over his previously taking the country into disastrous ‘endless wars’ in Iraq and Afghanistan – and the since widely acknowledged lies that helped sell the wars. Notably Dick Cheney as well as Vice President Kamala Harris were in attendance at the ceremony.

Instead Bush took the opportunity to highlight ‘domestic extremism’ – in a clear reference to the Capitol Hill events of January 6: “We have seen growing evidence that the dangers to our country can come not only across borders, but from violence that gathers within,” Bush said. “There is little cultural overlap between violent extremists abroad and violent extremists at home… But in their disdain for pluralism, in their disregard for human life, in their determination to defile national symbols, they are children of the same foul spirit.”

Much of the mainstream media subsequently praised Bush for the speech, but again without so much as any reference to the fact that the former president initiated and oversaw wars that by some estimates took over a million lives. 

But former President Trump, who it should be recalled years ago became the first ever Republican nominee to trash Bush’s decisions to invade Iraq just prior to being voted into office, said Monday that the 43rd president “shouldn’t be lecturing anybody.”

“So interesting to watch former President Bush, who is responsible for getting us into the quicksand of the Middle East (and then not winning!), as he lectures us that terrorists on the ‘right’ are a bigger problem than those from foreign countries that hate America, and that are pouring into our Country right now,” Trump said in his statement, which was distributed by Save America PAC.

“If that is so, why was he willing to spend trillions of dollars and be responsible for the death of perhaps millions of people? He shouldn’t be lecturing us about anything,” Trump added.

George W. Bush, the man who brought us torture, indefinite detention, assassination, and mass surveillance, rebukes those who’ve turned their backs on the “America I know.” https://t.co/nLbgQON4nU

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) September 11, 2021

While even liberal media personalities had celebrated the Bush speech over the weekend and his “courage” during the events of 9/11, Trump in contrast emphasized Bush was the president who allowed the Twin Towers to come “down during his watch” and said he “led a failed and uninspiring presidency.” Trump concluded that “He shouldn’t be lecturing anybody!” 

Meanwhile journalist Glenn Greenwald pointed out that liberals who once hated Bush have now effectively ‘rehabilitated’ him and his legacy as some kind of ‘resistance’ hero: “George Bush was once castigated by liberals as a new Hitler, a war criminal, and a primitive imbecile who stole not one but two elections.”

Greenwald continued: “Yet they swooned for him on 9/11 because he gave them what they most crave: the view that Al Qaeda is comparable to those who protested at the Capitol on 1/6.“