WASHINGTON — After enduring Donald Trump’s taunts on the presidential campaign trail for weeks, Jeb Bush on Tuesday released a blistering Web video that uses The Donald’s own words to portray him as a “liberal” and — even worse — a Manhattan resident.
The 81-second video employs old TV footage in which Trump identified as a Democrat, defended partial-birth abortions and heaped praise on Hillary Rodham Clinton.
“I lived in New York City and Manhattan all my life, OK, so my views are a little bit different than if I lived in Iowa,” Trump says in one shot aimed at voters in the critical caucus state.
In another, he says Clinton would be his choice to negotiate with Iran because she would do a “good job.”
Trump quickly responded in a tweet, “Yet another weak hit by a candidate with a failing campaign. Will Jeb sink as low in the polls as the others who have gone after me?”
Hours later, he retaliated with his own Web video, titled “No more Clintons or Bushes!” He released it on Instagram and posted it to Twitter after announcing he just surpassed 4 million followers.
The clip shows Bush family members saying nice things about Hillary Clinton — including a CNN clip where George W. Bush says the Democratic front-runner is like “my sister-in-law.”
The Bush video is a chance for the former Florida governor to claw his way back into relevancy as Trump and Ben Carson are tops in the polls of Republican voters shunning the establishment.
The RealClearPolitics average of national polls puts Trump as the clear front-runner at 26.5 percent, followed by Carson (12 percent) and Bush (9.5 percent). In Iowa, Bush doesn’t crack the top five.
With Trump leading, it’s time for him to feel the heat, said R.C. Hammond, former spokesman for Newt Gingrich.
“It shows that if Trump is going to maintain his spot atop the polls, he is going to have to answer questions,” Hammond told The Post.
For any other GOP presidential hopeful, the Bush attack video would be damning to a conservative’s credibility.
But Trump is a phenomenon in the polls who has defied all predictions, said Patrick Murray of the Monmouth University Polling Institute. “With Donald Trump, they say, ‘I don’t care,’ ” Murray said of voters.