Elder Bush slams filmmaker Moore Former president says in TV interview that criticism about his son hurts

KENNEBUNKPORT – Former President George H.W. Bush called filmmaker Michael Moore a “slimeball” for what he described as lies told about the Bush family in “Fahrenheit 9/11.”

Bush sat down for an interview with WCSH-TV before leaving for Houston and he didn’t hold back when asked his opinion of Moore, one of the nation’s best-known leftist activists.

“Total ass, slimeball,” Bush said. It’s “outrageous, his lies about my family.”

Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11” attacked President George W. Bush’s handling of the war on terrorists, his decision to go to war in Iraq and the Bush family’s ties to the Saudi royal family.

The movie claimed high-ranking Saudi nationals were allowed to flee the United States immediately after the attacks at a time when American airspace had been closed to commercial traffic.

The Sept. 11 commission found there was no evidence of Saudi flights before national airspace reopened on Sept. 13, 2001, and no evidence of political intervention.

Bush was interviewed last week outside his summer home at Walker’s Point. The interview aired Wednesday evening.

Sitting on his lawn, Bush spoke of his son’s presidential race against Democrat John Kerry.

Bush said he used to have ulcers in the 1960s. “A couple of more weeks of this stuff and I’ll get ’em back. I’m nervous. It hurts much more when your son is criticized,” the former president said.

During the interview, Bush took exception to the suggestion that his son’s presidency has been polarizing.

“I’m not sure I buy into this theory that the country is wholly divided. When you have a war that’s controversial, and this one is, I think you’re going to see divisions,” he said.