LAS VEGAS — Jeb Bush continued his harsh critique of Hillary Clinton and picked up endorsements from Republican Sens. Dean Heller of Nevada and Orrin Hatch of Utah during a campaign stop in Reno on Wednesday.
Bush’s stinging rebuke of Clinton followed the themes he laid out in a major foreign policy speech Tuesday night in which he linked Clinton and President Obama to the rise and spread of ISIS.
“I’m not attacking her,” Bush said while speaking to reporters Tuesday. “I’m just pointing out that the foreign policy that they have implemented was one that created a more dangerous world.”
The former Florida governor also knocked Clinton for her use of a private email server while secretary of state. Clinton’s campaign on Tuesday announced it would hand over the server to the Justice Department.
“It looks like she's hiding, the way she’s going about this I mean disclose it,” Bush said. “The FBI took it, it’s a little bit different than disclosing it.”
The Clinton campaign has not said whether the government ordered Clinton to turn over the server and thumb drives with emails.
Bush cited his own release of 33 years of tax returns and his own emails from his time in government as proof that his approach is superior to Clinton’s.
“I’m going to do an eBook based on my emails,” Bush said. “I think being transparent about these things is the proper way to go.”
The attacks on Clinton come as Bush takes a softer approach to his GOP rivals, saying just last weekend in Atlanta, “I’m going to do my best not to tear down my opponents cause I admire most of them, and I respect them all.”
Instead of attacking his Republican opponents outright, Bush has opted to critique tone — acknowledging candidates like Donald Trump — who he said today, “has clearly tapped into a sentiment in this, in our party of anger and angst about the future.”
But Bush then touts his own theory that a winning campaign is based more in hope than appealing to voters’ frustrations and candidates’ big personalities.
“You win campaigning in a way that will lift peoples spirits because that’s the way that you fix things and lead,” Bush said.
Most Republican senators have so far not committed to a 2016 candidate. Bush is hopeful the backing of Nevada’s only GOP senator, along with the support of a prominent Republican from neighboring Utah, will give him a boost in the early voting state.
Heller said in a statement, “The nation needs the pragmatic, conservative, principled leadership that only Jeb provides.”
Hatch added, “I know Jeb will return the United States to a position of leadership in the world.”
Bush ends his Nevada swing with a town hall event in the shadow of the Las Vegas Strip before making his way to Iowa for the remainder of the week.
NBC’s Emily Gold contributed to this report.
