Bush defends Trump against Clinton claim: Talk about chutzpah

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush is making a rare defense of rival Republican candidate Donald Trump, rejecting Hillary Clinton’s claim that the billionaire businessman has become a recruiting tool for the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

“Hillary Clinton suggesting that Donald Trump is being used in an ISIS recruiting video, man, talk about chutzpah,” Bush said Monday on Bill Bennett’s radio show, as highlighted by BuzzFeed News. “There’s no evidence of that. There’s no evidence of that at all.”

{mosads}The defense is unusual coming from Bush, who has been harshly critical of Trump during the Republican presidential race, calling him the “chaos candidate” and saying he can’t “insult his way to the presidency.”

Still, even as he backed Trump in the fight against Clinton, Bush emphasized that he doesn’t support Trump’s proposal to temporarily ban most Muslims from entering the United States.

“This is how they play the game on the left,” Bush said. “They’re always blaming somebody. This case, I think, while I don’t agree with Trump’s idea, I don’t he has anything to do with being part of a recruiting video.” 

During Saturday’s Democratic presidential debate, Clinton said that Trump “is becoming ISIS’s best recruiter” and claimed that the group uses the Republican presidential front-runner in propaganda videos to “recruit more radical jihadists.” 

Trump has demanded that Clinton apologize for her accusation, but Clinton’s presidential campaign chairman John Podesta said she’s won’t back down.

“Well, look, Chuck, your own network ran a piece citing the most important organization that follows ISIS on social media that said that they’re using social media, they’re using Donald Trump as a recruitment tool, so that’s what she was referencing, and that’s the interpretation we made,” Podesta said during a Sunday interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press”

 to show host Chuck Todd.