The Republican Party’s anti-intellectualism dates back even further.
U.S. President Donald Trump, a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, has been waging a war on expertise. From the moment then-advisor Kellyanne Conway spoke about “alternative facts” during an interview with Meet the Press in 2017 in backing then-White House press secretary Sean Spicer’s false claims about how many people attended the first inauguration, Trump has stood his ground. He has spent years dismissing what experts have to say on issues such as climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic, insisting that his commonsense approach to problems was superior. And now, in the first month of his second term, Trump has been attacking university expertise by implementing steep reductions in funding for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in ways that threaten basic scientific research; just late last week the administration started firing National Atmospheric Administration workers.
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Although Trump likes to distance himself from former President George W. Bush, there are more continuities than either would like to acknowledge. Indeed, attacks on expertise have been an essential element of Republican politics for decades. The reason that Trump’s blasts against institutions of knowledge resonate with voters is because the arguments have such deep roots in the party.
Anti-intellectualism, as the historian Richard Hofstadter argued in his classic work, is deeply embedded in American public culture. It was thus not surprising that for many decades Republicans tapped into this rhetoric as an effective weapon against Democrats. During the 1940s and 1950s, anti-intellectualism became an effective way to recast a party that, under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, had come to be seen as the champion of working- and middle-class America as, in fact, elitist. When Illinois Gov. Adlai Stevenson ran against military hero Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1952, Republican vice presidential candidate Richard Nixon called their opponent an “egghead.” In 1964, the actor Ronald Reagan delivered a speech in support of Republican presidential nominee Barry Goldwater in which he said: “The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they’re ignorant; it’s just that they know so much that isn’t so.”
Yet there were also limits as to how far most Republicans would go. After all, the early Cold War was an age of expertise. The rapid growth of the universities, funded by government spending for research and the GI Bill of Rights sending millions of veterans to college, elevated the standing of knowledge-makers in American society. Experts were everywhere. Psychologists, nuclear scientists, economists, and other disciplines saw their clout expand. Leaders from both parties respected their insights when forming policy. Conspiracy theories about science, such as allegations that communists were behind fluoridated water, were left to the cranks.
The real fault lines between Republicans and expertise started to take hold in the late 1960s. At a moment when many Americans were losing faith in the “best and the brightest” as a result of the disastrous Vietnam War—including some on the left who felt that knowledge had become a means for professions to assert their power—President Nixon pitted himself against the major institutions of American life. Though he still surrounded himself with some of the most renowned intellectuals, such as the economist Herbert Stein and Patrick Moynihan, Nixon set out to support the creation of alternative forms of knowledge to counteract what he perceived as the dominance of liberal intellectuals. As Sidney Blumenthal argued, conservatives created a counter-establishment of political think tanks, media outlets, and public intellectuals. “The cunning of these institutions was that they rested on a hidden asymmetry,” noted historian David Greenberg. “Though formally similar to those of the establishment, the Right’s organs were fundamentally different in that they served a plainly political purpose. Scholars at Brookings were committed, foremost, to scholarly values; the operatives at Heritage promoted the conservative cause above all.”
The tensions kept growing. As president, Reagan came under fire for ignoring the scientific research about acid rain and refused to even speak about HIV/AIDS for years as the disease ravaged cities like New York and San Francisco. On becoming speaker of the House in 1995, Rep. Newt Gingrich and fellow Republicans got rid of the Office of Technology Assessment, a unit that since 1972 had offered legislators in both parties scientific and technological analyses.
The fissures really came to a head during the presidency of George W. Bush. A Republican who was deeply influenced by Reagan, Bush perceived the value in distancing himself from expertise. During his campaign against Vice President Al Gore in 2000, Bush mocked Gore’s intelligence. In the debates, he gave cynical glances to deflate Gore’s clear mastery of policy issues. He made fun of Gore for claiming to have invented the internet—despite the fact that when in Congress, Gore had played a role in the development of the technology. “I’m beginning to think not only did he invent the internet,” Bush quipped in the first presidential debate, “he invented the calculator. It’s fuzzy math.”
Once in office, Bush criticized economists who opposed his tax cuts in 2001 and 2003. When a group of 400 economists, including 10 Nobel Prize winners, published a letter in the New York Times attacking the latter tax cut, the president simply released a statement from his own experts endorsing the bill. Bush decided to limit the number of embryonic stem cells available for research on Alzheimer’s and cancer to placate the religious right despite fierce protests from scientists who warned of the damaging consequences that would ensue.
The administration, which withdrew from the Kyoto Protocol shortly after taking office, challenged mainstream scientific consensus on global warning. Rather than focusing on how much regulation was warranted, the president echoed non-scientific claims that challenged whether global warning was even real. Multiple investigations exposed correspondence showing that the administration stifled research proving that the problem was very serious. The Union of Concerned Scientists warned: “[T]he administration has often manipulated the process through which science enters into its decisions. This has been done by placing people who are professionally unqualified or who have clear conflicts of interest in official posts and on scientific advisory committees; by disbanding existing advisory committees; by censoring and suppressing reports by the government’s own scientists; and by simply not seeking independent scientific advice.” The University of Southern California’s Center for Science and Democracy reached a similar conclusion. Its report in 2004, which 12,000 scientists signed, documented the ways that the administration suppressed scientific findings.
All of this happened against a backdrop of a war against Iraq that had been launched based on claims that Saddam Hussein possessed a massive cache of weapons of mass destruction. Though the war would continue throughout his two terms, those weapons did not exist.
Reporter Ron Suskind captured the kind of mentality that many found troubling in an article for the New York Times Magazine. Suskind recounted a conversation he’d had with a top aide, whom many believe was Karl Rove, who said to Suskind “that guys like me were ‘in what we call the reality-based community,’ which he defined as people who ‘believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.’ I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ‘That’s not the way the world really works anymore,’ he continued. ‘We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.’”
The world is a safer place for Americans when we lead
Promoting democratic values globally is defending Americans at home.
Two decades ago, President George W. Bush stood before the National Endowment for Democracy and declared, “the advance of freedom is the calling of our time.” He argued that liberty at home depends on the success of liberty abroad — and that supporting freedom overseas isn’t charity or idealism; it’s a strategic imperative for American security.
As leaders of institutions committed to freedom, we know this work is not easy, but we believe it is essential.
From Russia and China to Venezuela and Iran, authoritarian regimes are pushing back against everything we stand for. They aren’t just challenging our ideals. They’re working to build a world order where dissent is crushed, American businesses and workers can’t compete fairly, and U.S. influence is sidelined.
America plays a vital role in this struggle. The world and American national interests are much better served by having the United States be the leader of the democratic community of nations, pushing back against the authoritarian resurgence. Working closely with fellow democracies is critical, but no other country can substitute for our leadership.
Democracy assistance is not about telling other countries how to govern themselves but providing technical, moral and financial support for local leaders already working to fix their societies — on their terms. These activists seek our help and look to the United States for support. They are reformers seeking honest government, stronger institutions and safer communities — not foreign-imposed models.
Our adversaries know what’s at stake: A world with fewer democracies is a world where America loses. The question is simple: Will we lead or will we cede the field to our authoritarian adversaries?
This fight isn’t theoretical. In Venezuela, for example, a democratic opposition, under threat and harassment, still managed to win broad support in elections last summer. Thousands of ordinary citizens organized, voted and protected the ballot box even as the Maduro regime cracked down. But without sustained international support, those gains will vanish and tyranny will prevail.
A freer Venezuela wouldn’t just benefit its people; it would help stem migration to the Texas border, weaken the grip of drug cartels and transnational gangs, and reduce the influence of hostile regimes across the Gulf. It also would stem the influence of Russia and China in Latin America.
The lesson is clear: U.S. assistance to support freedom around the world doesn’t need to be massive — just smart, strategic and rooted in local leadership. Helping trusted partners stand up for freedom reinforces global stability and keeps our society safer, too. And it constitutes a tiny portion of federal spending: less than 5% of overall foreign assistance, and foreign assistance itself, contrary to widespread misconceptions, is only 1% of all federal spending.
By investing in democratic communities abroad, America strengthens its own security and global standing. Democracies are more likely to be peaceful, reliable partners and far less likely to foster terrorism or instability. The consequences of freedom’s decline — mass migration, economic chaos, foreign interference, the spread of infectious diseases — don’t stay overseas. They reach our borders and communities, including here in Texas.
We should be clear-eyed: Democracy support isn’t about imposing values. It’s about defending shared interests and backing those already risking everything for freedom. It remains one of the smartest, most cost-effective foreign policy investments we can make. It makes America stronger, safer and more prosperous since it would reduce the need to address costly threats from overseas.
We see this in action every day: journalists in the country of Georgia exposing corruption, watchdogs in Ukraine protecting taxpayer funds, activists in Afghanistan resisting the Taliban and brave women in Iran demanding basic rights. These leaders aren’t passively waiting for tyranny to recede. They’re challenging it head on. With modest support, they’re delivering outsized results.
We cannot afford to retreat. As President Bush warned, “The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world.” That remains true today. But freedom cannot be handed down from abroad. It must be built from within. When we stand with those doing that work, we don’t impose solutions — we help local leaders deliver real results that make their countries, and ours, safer and stronger.
As Congress debates our nation’s foreign policy priorities, it has the chance to reaffirm one of America’s greatest traditions: supporting those who fight for freedom not with force, but with solidarity. This isn’t charity; it’s strategy. And it’s one of the most effective ways to shape a future where America remains secure, respected and free.
Damon Wilson is president and CEO of the National Endowment for Democracy. David J. Kramer is executive director of the George W. Bush Institute.
Why Jenna Bush Hager “Started Weeping” After Dad George W. Bush Texted Her This
Between living in the White House and becoming a beloved host of TODAY, Jenna Bush Hager has spent most of her life in the public eye. And through the years in the spotlight, it’s always been so obvious that the mom of three shares a very close and meaningful bond with her father, George W. Bush.
From simple but impactful text messages during a tough workday to walking her down the aisle at her wedding, the former president has always been there for his daughter. Read on to look back at some of their sweetest father-daughter moments together.
Jenna Bush Hager shares the text her dad sent her to remind her “what matters” most
In February 2023, Jenna told her former TODAY co-host Hoda Kotb about a time she’ll “never forget” that her dad got her out of a funk shortly after the birth of her first child, daughter Mila.
“I’ll never forget when I was working here, I was doing something and I was kind of frustrated because jobs can be frustrating. This business is kind of tricky and I was upset,” she shared, adding that she had talked to her mom about what was bothering her the night before.
“So I got a text from my dad that was like, ‘Mom tells me you’re feeling kind of bummed out. Here’s the thing, this is what matters.’ And he just sent me a baby picture of Mila, I had just become a mom,” she continued. “And I started weeping. I was like, ‘He’s totally right.’”
Jenna Bush Hager says her dad has the “biggest potty mouth” in the family
The former president might’ve “turned red” with embarrassment when one of his daughter’s high school boyfriends called him “Big George,” but he’s not always prim and proper. In fact, Jenna and her twin sister, Barbara Pierce Bush, revealed to Access Hollywood in March 2025 that their dad has “the biggest potty mouth” in the family.
And that might not be a total surprise to some as President Bush had been caught cursing a few times during his time in the White House.
Jenna Bush Hager once pranked her dad with a fake tattoo
Back in the day, Jenna pulled a fast one on her dad. During a May 2025 segment of TODAY, Jenna revealed to her co-anchor Savannah Guthrie that her twin sister Barbara helped her pull off a prank when she drew a tattoo on her back and they convinced the former president it was the real deal.
“I once did play a prank on my dad where Barbara drew a tattoo of a Texas Longhorn in Sharpie right here,” Jenna recalled, pointing to her lower back. “I showed my dad and pretended I got one, and he believed me. He was like, ‘OK, when you’re 80, you know what that’s gonna look like.'”
George W. Bush drove his daughter to her wedding in his pickup truck
When Jenna married her husband, Henry Hager, on May 10, 2008 at Bush family’s ranch in Crawford, Texas, she and her father arrived in style.
“I think my dad picked me up in a pickup truck — in his pickup truck,” Jenna shared on TODAY in 2021, adding that she and her father became emotional when he walked her down the aisle. “He said, ‘You look beautiful, baby,’ and then we both just wept up and down. I remember seeing Henry clearly, standing there at this cross that my dad had helped build for us.”
After the ceremony, the then-president shared in a 2008 press conference that it was a “spectacular” wedding. “Our little girl, Jenna, married a really good guy, Henry Hager,” he said at the time. “The wedding was spectacular. It’s just — it’s all we could have hoped for. The weather cooperated nicely. Just as the vows were exchanged, the sun set over our lake and it was just a special day and a wonderful day and we’re mighty blessed.”
George W. Bush gave Henry Hager his blessing to propose to his daughter in the chillest way
Before Henry popped the big question on top of Cadillac Mountain in Maine in August 2007, he secured some time on the president’s schedule to ask him for permission to marry his daughter. And while the future groom was stressing over this conversation and even prepped a “seven-point plan,” Mr. Bush calmed his nerves and happily gave him his blessing.
“My dad goes, ‘Henry, I said yes. You don’t need to go through anything else. Laura, Henry’s proposing,’ and that was that,” Jenna revealed in 2023 on TODAY about her husband’s proposal. “Good thing he did it.”
Jenna Bush Hager’s dad taught her to be resilient and brush off the small stuff
In a March 2022 episode of TODAY, Jenna opened up about how she’s looked back at moments from her own childhood as she teaches her children about how to cope with rejection or hurtful comments.
“I watched as my parents took on stuff and would say to us, ‘Baby, it didn’t matter. We know we’re not like that. We know we’re not that person,'” she recalled, going on to share a specific moment when she and her sister saw a bumper sticker about their dad.
“We were like, ‘Dad, we saw the best bumper sticker. It said, ‘A village in Texas is missing its idiot!’ and he laughed hysterically because he knows who he is,” she shared.
And his laidback sense of humor seems to have been passed down to his daughter as Jenna shared on TODAY in March 2024 that “gently roasting” her dad is her “love language.”
“I like to harass my dad. Like when he was the president, Barbara and I would show him … like the Saturday Night Lives where they made fun of him and stuff. He loved it!” she said. “If you’re going to be the President of the United States, people are going to make fun of you. And guess what — it ain’t just about you. That’s how it is, man.”
And according to Jenna, the former president “didn’t care” that he was impersonated by several SNL cast members, including Will Ferrell. “He thought it was hilarious!” she said on TODAY.
Jenna Bush Hager says her dad “embarrasses” her
When former President Bush quickly went viral at President Donald Trump’s inauguration in January 2025 for his hilarious facial expressions and other funny moments caught on camera, Jenna was not at all surprised.
“He goes viral for basically anything,” Jenna told TODAY guest co-host Scarlett Johansson at the time. “He didn’t do anything, that’s what his face looks like. That’s his face. I mean, he raised his eyebrows and went viral. It shows, like, he actually was very well-behaved.”
And because he goes viral for just about anything, Jenna had warned him to “keep it cool” when he attended President Jimmy Carter’s funeral earlier in January 2025. “My dad embarrasses me, I have to be honest,” Jenna told TODAY’s guest host Taraji P. Henson in January 2025. “And sometimes, I’ll say to him, like, ‘Dad, the attention is gonna be on you — try to just keep it cool.’”
Jenna then pointed out how her dad was spotted giving President Barack Obama a “little man tap” as he arrived at the presidential funeral. “I’m like, ‘Dad, something like that … just put out your hand,” she said on TODAY. “I guess they’re bros?”
Jenna Bush Hager says her dad raised her to feel like she could “do anything”
While she and her sister spent most of their childhood in the spotlight and their father had a very demanding political career, Jenna shared on TODAY in January 2025 that President Bush was always a “present” dad.
“He was present, he was paying attention to us,” she said. “And he made us feel like we could do anything.”
In March 2025, Jenna also commended her parents for giving her and Barbara “the freedom to make mistakes” while they were growing up, even though she admitted they were “sometimes wild.”
“We didn’t feel any pressure to be anything but us, which is such a great gift, especially when you’re that age,” Jenna said on TODAY. “You have to make mistakes to grow.”
Michelle Obama and George W. Bush Have the Same Love Language, Jenna Bush Hager Says
The ‘Today’ host is reflecting on her dad’s unlikely friendship with the former first lady
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Michelle Obama and George W. Bush’s friendship may seem unexpected to some, but not to those who know them best.
On Today With Jenna & Friends on Wednesday, May 14, Jenna Bush Hager reflected on Obama’s recent appearance on Amy Poehler’s podcast, Good Hang. After noting that the former first lady is comfortable poking fun at herself, Bush Hager said her father is the same.
“We love to tease my dad. And he likes it, usually, if he’s in a good mood,” she shared. “But also, I just realized why my dad and Mrs. Obama are friends! They have the same love language.”
Bush Hager said that the love language of laughter is something that spans generations in her family.
“My mom laughs hysterically at my dad,” she said of former first lady Laura Bush. “My dad mainly makes fun of himself. He’s self-deprecating, but my mom thinks he’s the funniest person in the entire world.”
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As for her own home life with husband Henry Chase Hager and their three children, Bush Hager added, “Humor is the love language in [our] house, too.”
Self-deprecating humor is certainly one thing that can bring Mrs. Obama and former President Bush together, though their friendship is already plenty strong.
The odd couple make headlines nearly every time they’re photographed together at a public event. Whether sharing a laugh or an embrace, their bond is notable given their political differences.
They shared a warm hug at the opening of the National Museum of African American History and Culture in September 2016 and Bush even surreptitiously passed Obama a mint during the funeral service for his father, former President George H.W. Bush, in December 2018.
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“He has the presence of mind and the sense of humor to bring me a mint,” Obama said following the service, according to ABC7. “And he made it a point to give me that mint right then and there, and that’s the beauty of George Bush.”
In an interview on CBS Sunday Morning in April 2021, Bush reflected on the public discourse about his bond with Obama.
“The American people were so surprised that Michelle Obama and I could be friends,” he mused. “Americans are so polarized in their thinking that they can’t imagine a George W. Bush and a Michelle Obama being friends.”
Melania Trump unveils stamp honoring Barbara Bush, with George W. Bush absent
First lady Melania Trump hosted the unveiling of a U.S. Postal Service stamp honoring former first lady Barbara Bush at the White House on Thursday — with a notable absence of former President George W. Bush.
A number of family and friends of the Bush family, including Neil Bush and Dorothy Bush Koch, filled the East Room for the event honoring the former first lady, who died in 2018 at the age of 92.
Dorothy Bush Koch, the youngest child of the 41st president and first lady, spoke about her mother’s impact in transforming the White House into a “true home.”
Melania Trump, who has made few appearances in Washington during her husband’s first three months in office, celebrated Barbara Bush’s political and family life.
“Mrs. Bush’s legacy is marked by her respect for tradition while also breaking with convention,” Melania Trump said.
Other Bush children, George W. Bush and Jeb Bush, did not attend the event.
George W. Bush, who has kept a relatively low profile since leaving office, was in Washington for President Donald Trump’s inauguration earlier this year. He was seated near former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former President Bill Clinton and former President Barack Obama.
But he has otherwise kept Trump, a fellow Republican, at arm’s length and the two have a history of mutual criticism.
ABC News reached out to George W. Bush’s office for comment on Thursday’s event.
George W. Bush didn’t endorse Trump in any of his presidential campaigns. In 2020, he said he didn’t vote for either Trump or Joe Biden, but rather wrote in Condoleezza Rice, who served as his secretary of state between 2005 and 2009.
He and his father, late President George H.W. Bush, were critical of Trump in a 2017 book, in which they expressed concern about his impact on the Republican Party and conservative values. In a rare public speech that same year, George W. Bush condemned the brand of politics embraced by Trump and his supporters, though didn’t explicitly mention Trump by name.
Barbara Bush once said of Trump, “I don’t understand why people are for him.”
Trump’s criticism of the Bush family ramped up during the 2016 Republican presidential primary as he went after Jeb Bush as “low energy.” He later bragged of beating the “Bush Dynasty” after his election victory.
Trump has also repeatedly criticized George W. Bush’s response to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the Iraq war.
“Bush led a failed and uninspiring presidency. He shouldn’t be lecturing anybody!” Trump said in 2021 after George W. Bush gave a 20th anniversary speech in which he warned domestic terrorism posed as much of a threat as foreign terrorists.
