Another woman is detailing an experience in which George H.W. Bush allegedly groped her.
Christina Baker Kline published a story for Slate in which she recounted meeting the former President in April 2014 at the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy fundraiser.
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“President George H.W. Bush, whom I had not yet met, sat in his wheelchair in the center of the room, while others were arranged around him for photos in various groupings,” Kline wrote. “When it came time for my husband and me to be photographed with him, President Bush beckoned me close.”
After telling Kline that she was “beautiful,” Bush then said, “You wanna know my favorite book?”
“By now the photographer was readying the shot. My husband stood on one side of the wheelchair, and I stood on the other,” Kline continued. “President Bush put his arm around me, low on my back. His comic timing was impeccable. ‘David Cop-a-feel,’ he said, and squeezed my butt, hard, just as the photographer snapped the photo. Instinctively, I swiped his hand away.”
After the inappropriate interaction, Kline says that she told her husband about it. At the time she addressed the subject, she was in the car with a friend of the Bush family who was driving them to a hotel.
Kline says that the driver said to her, “I do trust you will be…discreet,” she said.
“Her comment wasn’t menacing,” Kline wrote. “But in that moment I thought: She has heard this before. The people around President Bush are accustomed to doing damage control.There must be many of us, I remember thinking. And now I know there are.”
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Bush spokesman, Jim McGrath, previously addressed similar allegations that the former President groped females using the same joke.
“At age 93, President Bush has been confined to a wheelchair for roughly five years, so his arm falls on the lower waist of people with whom he takes pictures. To try to put people at ease, the president routinely tells the same joke — and on occasion, he has patted women’s rears in what he intended to be a good-natured manner,” McGrath said.
“Some have seen it as innocent; others clearly view it as inappropriate. To anyone he has offended, President Bush apologizes most sincerely.”
