Former President George W. Bush’s office shared with multiple news outlets on Saturday that he currently has no plans of announcing a formal endorsement of any candidate in the 2024 presidential election.
His office shared that neither Bush nor his wife, former first lady Laura Bush, plan on publicly sharing who they will be casting their ballots for, according to a report from NBC News. His office noted that “President Bush retired from presidential politics years ago.”
Bush’s announcement comes days after his vice president, Dick Cheney, and his daughter, former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), announced they would be voting for Vice President Kamala Harris.
The former vice president’s daughter shared her endorsement of Harris at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy and his at the Texas Tribune Festival on Friday.
“Because of the danger that Donald Trump poses, not only am I not voting for Donald Trump, but I will be voting for Kamala Harris,” former Rep. Cheney said earlier this week.
The former Congresswoman went on to say that voters didn’t have “the luxury of writing in candidates’ names, particularly in swing states,” stressing that it was “crucially important” to make their vote count.
Harris told reporters on Saturday that she was “honored” to receive the support from her predecessor.
“And them stepping up to make this public statement, I think, is courageous, but also for the folks I was just talking with, it really reinforces for them that we love our country, and we have more in common than what separates us,” Harris said on Saturday.
Former President Donald Trump, the GOP nominee, slammed former Vice President Cheney after it broke that he would be voting for Harris, saying he was an “irrelevant RINO” or “Republican in name only.”
“Dick Cheney is an irrelevant RINO, along with his daughter, who lost by the largest margin in the History of Congressional Races!” Trump wrote on TruthSocial.
As for Bush, this will mark the third election in which he has not endorsed either major party candidate, with the last candidate to receive his endorsement being then-presidential candidate Mitt Romney in 2012.