Jeb Bush begs town hall attendees to ‘please clap’
For Jeb Bush supporters who may be face-palm averse, you may want to look away.
At a town hall event in New Hampshire on Tuesday, the former Florida governor and Republican presidential hopeful asked attendees to “please clap” after his call for the next commander in chief “to be a lot quieter” was met with silence.
“I will not trash-talk,” Bush said at the event in Hanover, N.H., a day after finishing a distant sixth in the Iowa caucuses. “I will not be a divider in chief or an agitator in chief. I won’t be out there blowharding, talking a big game without backing it up. I think the next president needs to be a lot quieter, but send a signal that we’re prepared to act in the national security interests of this country — to get back in the business of creating a more peaceful world.”
After failing to elicit applause, a tired-sounding Bush pleaded with the crowd.
“Please clap,” he said, drawing applause — and some awkward laughter.
To make matters worse, the lights in the room went off three times while Bush was speaking.
“Apparently the hotel was having issues with its electricity,” MSNBC’s Joy Y. Wang reported.
It’s not the first time Bush has had trouble firing up a crowd in the Granite State.
In September, a woman was seen nodding off while listening to Bush speak about health insurance at a town hall event in Hampton.
The Bush campaign later identified the woman as Tara, a working mother who woke up at 4 a.m. to work a 12-hour shift so she could see the former governor of Florida speak.
Republican frontrunner Donald Trump, who had already labeled Bush a “low energy" candidate, slapped him with a mock sleep-aid commercial posted to Instagram.
The ad’s tagline: “Jeb: For all your sleeping needs.”
Bush’s last event in Iowa didn’t exactly go smoothly either.
Moments after he began speaking at the Embassy Suites in downtown Des Moines on Monday, two young men stood up and demanded to be paid for their “seat filling.”
“We’ve been here for over two hours, and we haven’t gotten paid for our time,” one man said, according to the Des Moines Register.
“That is such — get out of here, man,” Bush shot back, and the men were removed.
The Bush campaign blamed the “shenanigans” on supporters of GOP rival Marco Rubio.
(Cover tile photo: Andrew Burton/Getty Images)
