Former Florida governor and presidential candidate Jeb Bush says Republicans will get clobbered if the 2018 congressional midterms focus on the actual words that come out of our president's mouth on a daily basis.

Speaking with USA Today, Bush did say that while Trump's rollback of business regulations were a good move, the president's inability to filter his own racist and derogatory garbage will have serious consequences for the GOP. 



"If the election is nationalized and it's not about the economy, then we'll lose," said Bush. "The character of the guy and the (turnover) and fighting, and just the constant chaos around his presidency that is self-inflicted has made it hard for him. I want the president to succeed. I don't think he will succeed if he continues on this path."

On a related note, Bush also took the time to drag Florida Sen. Marco Rubio for not doing enough on immigration. "God forbid you actually took on something that was controversial and paid a political price," said Bush. "That's the attitude in D.C. right now. Certainly Sen. Rubio is no different in that regard. Marco is a talented guy and he understands this issue really well, and maybe behind the scenes he's working hard. But at some point, his leadership would be really helpful."



Lucky for Rubio, he isn't up for re-election until 2022, but this isn't the case for Florida congressmen like Matt Gaetz, Neal Dunn, John Rutherford and Ted Yoho, all of which have 2018 to worry about.

Let's not tiptoe around terms; Trump is a racist. Even though our president's most recent "shithole" comments are still fresh, just for fun, let's run down memory lane with a few classic Trump moments from this New York Times list (which you really should read in its entirety):

• Trump’s real-estate company tried to avoid renting apartments to African-Americans in the 1970s and gave preferential treatment to whites, according to the federal government.
  
  
• In 1989, Trump took out ads in New York newspapers urging the death penalty for five black and Latino teenagers accused of raping a white woman in Central Park; he argued they were guilty as late as October 2016, more than 10 years after DNA evidence had exonerated them.
  
  
• He began his 2016 presidential campaign with a speech disparaging Mexican immigrants as criminals and “rapists.”
  
  
• In December 2015, Trump called for a “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States,” including refusing to readmit Muslim-American citizens who were outside of the country at the time.
  
  
• In June 2017, Trump said 15,000 recent immigrants from Haiti “all have AIDS” and that 40,000 Nigerians, once seeing the United States, would never “go back to their huts” in Africa.
  
  
• He spent years suggesting that the nation’s first black president was born not in the United States but in Kenya, a lie that Trump still has not acknowledged as such.
  
  
• He called Puerto Ricans who criticized his administration’s response to Hurricane Maria “politically motivated ingrates.”
  
  
• After David Duke, the former leader of the Ku Klux Klan, endorsed him, Trump was reluctant to disavow Duke even when asked directly on television.
  
  
• He has retweeted white nationalists without apology.
  

Jeb is right. Florida Democrats have already started piling on Trump and using him as a full on platform for 2018. Democrat Mary Barzee Flores released an television ad this week where she says Trump "abused his power, obstructed justice, encouraged hatred and violence, and used his office to further enrich himself and his family."

So yeah, focusing on Trump doesn't seem to be much of an advantage for the GOP in 2018, which might explain why Florida's governor Gov. Rick Scott appears to be cooling from the idea of a Senate run.