Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush says he wasn’t aware of a slideshow produced by his campaign that called presidential opponent Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) a “GOP Obama.”
“I didn’t see it,” he said in an interview taped for NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
{mosads}Pressed on the issue, Bush repeated those words: “I didn’t see it. I didn’t see it.”
“Well I read about it when it was leaked, for sure,” he said. “I didn’t know about the PowerPoint. It wasn’t presented to me.”
But Bush also said attacks were part of the political game, while denying that they were the animating feature of his campaign.
“You know that comparing and contrasting is part of this,” he said. “But the basis of my campaign is that we can fix these problems and people can be lifted out of poverty and the great middle can get rising income again.”
The leak of the full presentation to US News & World Report — an earlier leak revealed some of the slides — came during an already-rough stretch for his campaign.
Bush was battered by Rubio during an exchange in Wednesday’s GOP presidential debate, and he was forced to slash salaries for his staff.
The presentation was delivered by Bush advisers looking to reassure jittery donors.
Though the former governor was an early front-runner in the GOP race, he and his allies have struggled to keep up in a campaign dominated by the bombast of real estate developer Donald Trump.
Bush currently is in fifth place with 6.6 percent support in the presidential race, according to a RealClearPolitics average of polls.