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After Donald Trump goes nuclear on Jeb Bush, Jeb responds that Trump is soft on crime

Jeb Bush
Jeb Bush

(REUTERS/Brian Snyder)
Jeb Bush takes a question from the audience during a town-hall meeting at the Medallion Opera House in Gorham, New Hampshire July 23, 2015.

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, a Republican, is hitting back at Donald Trump over a vicious new attack from Trump earlier Monday.

After Trump blasted Bush's history on immigration Monday in a short Instagram video, the Bush campaign hit back with a bullet-pointed list alleging why Trump was soft on crime.

Bush cited Trump's support in 1990 to legalize drugs in order to fight rising crime rates, as well as his previous financial support for Democrats.

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Bush's official Twitter account also blasted out a picture of US House of Representatives Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-California) — a divisive member of Congress reviled by conservatives — on which Trump personally wrote that she was "The Greatest."

The Bush campaign also cited what it portrayed as Bush's strong record on crime during his time as Florida's governor, noting that crime in Florida dropped to its lowest rate since 1971 under Bush's tenure in office.

Coincidental or not, the spat calls back to the legacy of Bush's father.

On Monday, many political observers noted that Trump's video resembled the famous "Willie Horton" attack ad run by one of former President George H.W. Bush's political action committees during the 1988 presidential campaign.

The advertisement, which warned that Bush's then-opponent — former Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis, a Democrat — was soft on crime, was criticized as a racially motivated attack ad.

Jeb Bush, opening up a new front against Trump over the past few weeks, has repeatedly hammered Trump's conservative credentials. Bush has lagged behind Trump over the past month in national polls and surveys of the early-voting states of Iowa and New Hampshire.

"Mr. Trump doesn't have a proven conservative record," Bush said at a campaign event earlier this month. "He was a Democrat longer in the last decade than he was a Republican."

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