First lady Melania Trump will unveil a new stamp honoring former first lady Barbara Bush later this week at the White House.
The unveiling ceremony will occur on Thursday and among those expected to attend are Acting Postmaster General Doug Tulino, George and Barbara Bush Foundation CEO Alice Yates, and Doro Bush Koch, daughter of the former president and first lady.
The stamp will be the latest by the Postal Service to honor a former first lady, after the USPS and then-first lady Jill Biden unveiled stamps honoring former first ladies Nancy Reagan and Betty Ford in 2022 and 2024, respectively. The first former first lady to receive the honor of being placed on a stamp by the USPS was Martha Washington, who served in the role while her husband, George Washington, was in office from 1789 until 1797.
Bush served as first lady from 1989 until 1993, when her husband, George H.W. Bush, served as president for one term. Both Barbara and George H.W. Bush died in 2018 at ages 92 and 94, respectively.
Upon Barbara Bush’s death in 2018, Melania Trump called her a “woman of strength.”
“Throughout her life, she put family and country above all else. Her dedicated service to the American people was matched only by her compassion and love of family. She was a woman of strength and we will always remember her for her most important roles of wife, mother, and First Lady of the United States,” Trump said in a statement in April 2018.
Several presidents, including Barbara Bush’s husband, have been honored with a stamp from the Postal Service. George H.W. Bush’s stamp was released in 2019.
Barbara Bush was reportedly not keen on President Donald Trump in the final years of her life, with the 2019 book The Matriarch: Barbara Bush and the Making of an American Dynasty claiming that the former first lady blamed her heart problems on the president. She also allegedly had a countdown clock to the end of Trump’s first term in office which was by her side until she died on April 17, 2018.
When asked about the revelations from the book in 2019, the president, then in his first term, said he understood the former first lady’s criticisms.
“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 in 2019.
During the 2016 Republican presidential primary, Trump took aim at former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, a top contender early on and one of Barbara Bush’s sons, several times. Some of Trump’s jabs aimed at Jeb Bush included calling him “low energy” and attacking his brother, former President George W. Bush, for the war in Iraq.
One of Trump’s attacks on Jeb Bush included sharing a 2013 clip of Barbara Bush saying she did not think her son should run for president. The former first lady would later walk back those comments and support her son’s 2016 presidential run.
“I think it’s a great country, there are a lot of great families, there are a lot of people out there who are very qualified. We’ve had enough Bushes,” Barbara Bush said in a 2013 interview, which Trump recirculated in August 2015 adding “Mother knows best Jeb!”
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Trump did not attend Barbara Bush’s funeral in 2018, but heralded her as “an advocate of the American family” in a statement upon her death.
“Amongst her greatest achievements was recognizing the importance of literacy as a fundamental family value that requires nurturing and protection. She will be long remembered for her strong devotion to country and family, both of which she served unfailingly well,” Trump said in a statement in 2018.