Phil Ammann
On Wednesday morning, Jeb Bush got “Skimmed.”
The Republican presidential hopeful appeared on theSkimm, a daily email new digest featuring “Skimm Your Candidate,” a series interviews with the 2016 White House aspirants patterned after a preliminary job interview.
Skimm began in 2012 as daily email newsletters with fresh content produced by Carly Zakin and Danielle Weisberg, two NBC News staffers who met in Rome during college. The Daily Skimm now reaches an audience of more than 1.5 million subscribers, with an industry-leading email open rate of 40 percent.
Wednesday’s Skimm had the former governor clarifying his positions on climate change (he supports natural gas), the Iran nuclear deal (“it stinks”), and the Obama administration’s policy on ISIS (no strategy is not the same as a good plan, he said).
As for regulatory reform, Bush said he would repeal Dodd-Frank if he could.
“It’s not the intention of regulation that matters,” he said. “It’s actually the results. And these results have created greater systemic risk and are hurting the heartland.”
On gun control, after last week’s Oregon shooting, Bush said he remains a “strong supporter” of the Second Amendment.
“I believe that in addressing violent crime, we need to focus on violent criminals and persons with mental illnesses, not restricting the rights of law-abiding gun owners,” he said.
Bush also gave theSkimm’s target audience — women aged 22 to 34 – a glimpse of his private life, such as the time he met Columba, who became his wife, and what would be his first meal at the White House (and possibly cheating on his paleo diet). He also talked about the differences with his brother.
According to Zakin and Weisberg, the goal of theSkimm is to “make it easier to be smarter” as part of a nonpartisan mission to boost participation in the 2016 election cycle.
Bush was the 11th candidate to participate in “Skimm Your Candidate.” All declared candidates have been invited to Guest Skimm.
Candidates who have already Skimmed are Republicans Marco Rubio, Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, George Pataki, Carly Fiorina and Bobby Jindal, and Democrats Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and Lincoln Chafee.
