While exploring his own 2016 GOP presidential bid last year, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney told Jeb Bush that he wasn’t sure the former Florida governor could defeat Democratic hopeful Hillary Clinton to win the White House.
Romney recalled his remarks during an interview with The Washington Post, telling the newspaper of his meeting with Bush in January 2015.
{mosads}“Jeb, to be very honest, I think it’s very hard for you to post up against Hillary Clinton and to separate yourself from the difficulty of the W. years and compare them with the Clinton years,” Romney recalled saying to Bush.
According to Romney, Bush responded that “he was going to make his campaign about the future, not about the past.”
“I didn’t say anything at that point,” Romney told the Post. “But as he left, I said to myself, ‘Gosh, in my opinion, it’s not going to be as easy to make that separation as I think he gives the impression it will be.’ One of the few things I predicted that turned out to be true.”
A Bush spokesperson declined to comment to the newspaper, saying that they wanted to honor Bush’s commitment to Romney about keeping their meeting private.
Romney, the 2012 GOP nominee who lost to Barack Obama, openly explored running for president in 2016 for several weeks early last year before deciding against it and calling for “one of our next generation of Republican leaders” to run for the GOP nomination.