Former President George W. Bush did not attend a White House ceremony hosted by First Lady Melania Trump honoring his late mother, Barbara Bush. The event, held on Thursday, May 8, in the East Room, unveiled a U.S. Postal Service stamp dedicated to the former first lady who passed away in 2018 at the age of 92.
While Bush himself was notably absent, his younger sister Dorothy Bush Koch was one of several featured speakers at the event. His brother, Neil Bush, and Alice Yates, Chief Executive of the George and Barbara Bush Foundation, also attended the ceremony.
The former president’s absence marks another chapter in the complicated relationship between the Bush family and President Donald Trump. Although Bush attended both of Trump’s inaugurations in 2017 and 2025, he did not endorse Trump during any of Trump’s three presidential campaigns and maintained a political distance throughout Trump’s time in office. During the 2025 inauguration, he and former First Lady Laura Bush left before the luncheon.
During Trump’s first administration, Bush made his views on the political climate known without directly naming the president. At a 2021 event commemorating the 20th anniversary of the September 11 attacks, Bush lamented that “so much of our politics has become a naked appeal to anger, fear, and resentment.”
Trump appeared to take these comments personally, responding that Bush “led a failed and uninspiring presidency” and “shouldn’t be lecturing anybody!” The exchange highlighted the ongoing tension between the two Republican presidents, who have maintained a civil but distant relationship.
This instance of Bush distancing himself from the White House comes after years of complex interactions between the Bush and Trump families. During the 2016 Republican primary, Trump engaged in a heated rivalry with former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, George W. Bush’s younger brother, famously labeling him as “low energy Jeb.”
The rivalry between the families extends back even to the late Barbara Bush herself. In the 2019 biography “The Matriarch: Barbara Bush and the Making of a Dynasty” by Susan Page, Barbara Bush was revealed to have called Trump “a symbol of greed” in a diary entry from the 1990s. The book also disclosed that in the months before her death, she no longer considered herself a Republican despite having been one of the party’s most recognizable faces for decades.
When asked about Barbara Bush’s criticism in 2019, President Trump acknowledged her feelings toward him. “I have heard that she was nasty to me, but she should be. Look what I did to her sons,” Trump told the Washington Times, referencing his political battles with both Jeb and George W. Bush.
The Barbara Bush commemorative stamp will join a collection featuring other former first ladies. Nancy Reagan was the most recent addition to this series, with her stamp unveiled in 2022.
Bush has maintained a relatively low public profile in recent years, but his absence from this ceremony was particularly notable given that it honors his mother. While he has refrained from openly criticizing Trump, his decision not to attend an event celebrating his mother’s legacy speaks to the continuing tensions between two of America’s most prominent political families.
The event was one of Melania Trump’s more noteworthy appearances as First Lady during her husband’s second term. In 2018, she attended Barbara Bush’s funeral in Houston, Texas, representing the Trump administration alongside representatives from other presidential families.
The Bush family has historically maintained cordial relations with other presidential families across party lines. George W. Bush has been seen sharing friendly moments with former Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama at various events, most recently at former President Jimmy Carter’s funeral earlier this year.
Despite Trump’s sometimes harsh rhetoric toward the Bush administration and policies, particularly regarding foreign policy decisions in Iraq and Afghanistan, the two families have maintained at least a veneer of civility at official functions.
In a joint farewell video for the U.S. Agency for International Development, Bush appeared alongside Barack Obama and singer Bono to strongly criticize the Trump administration’s decision to dismantle USAID. Bush described closing the agency, which had existed for sixty years, as a huge mistake and stressed the critical, life-saving efforts it led, especially through PEPFAR, indirectly challenging Trump’s “America First” approach to government restructuring.
