1. Flagrant virtue-signaling is nauseating enough, but incompetent virtue-signaling is just sad.
2. This is why public figures, celebrities, politicians, journalists, academics and lawyers are irresponsible to send tweets. Twitter makes you stupid, and if you are already stupid, it lets everybody know.
3. Nobody should care about medal totals, other than the fact that the nation spends far too much money on preparing for the Olympics, and its a rough way to gauge how well the funds are being spent. The U.S. should care about the way its athletes comport themselves, and the character they demonstrate to the world.
4. Surely Jeb isn’t suggesting that national policy regarding immigration or indeed anything should be influenced by the results in the Olympics. Because that would really be stupid.
5. What is Bush advocating? “The last few years” we have excluded (or tried to exclude) those who crossed our borders illegally, as well as those seeking refugee status from nations with significant terrorism activities.
6. Even if we had open borders “the last few years,” none of the immigrants who came here could have qualified for citizenship in time to compete in the Olympics. Does Bush not understand the process?
7. I’d get that heart-swelling problem looked at, Jeb.
8. For those who sweat over such trivial things, the U.S. medal count is fine. It leads in medals, and is second in gold medals.
9. Matt Margolis, a usually fair conservative pundit, writes in part,
“…the most disturbing thing (I think) about the tweet is that he seems to be implying that because of the Trump years, America didn’t get enough foreign-born talent to do better in the Olympics. So are foreign-born Americans better athletes than American-born athletes, Jeb? …it seems incredibly anti-American to imply that American-born athletes are inferior to foreign-born athletes. I’m sure you thought it made you sound woke and inclusive, but instead, it just makes you sound anti-American.”
That’s reading too much into a dumb tweet Jeb probably shot off without thinking it through. Having more immigrants, see, would mean a bigger pool of great athletes for the US to choose from…if you ignore citizenship requirements of course. That’s what Jeb was “thinking.”
10. We should be grateful to Jeb for helping to explain for those who haven’t figured it out yet how Donald Trump crushed the GOP establishment in 2016. This tweet represents the quality of thought of the man the party thought was its frontrunner for the Presidency. Wow.
Ethics Alarms 
I think that what Bush means is “…if we [always] had an exclusionary immigration system[,] which we have had for the last few years.” In other words, the cumulative effect of an exclusionary system, with a swipe at Trump. Of course, the system we had under Trump, and at other times, is the system set up by Congress under the Constitution.
All of Bush’s extra medals would be extracted from the best talents of all the poor countries of the world.
Extraordinary talent visas already exist. Pretty sure you can modify that category to allow for fast track citizenship. Done. More medals.
Yes, but what a trivial use of such visas!
I know, just letting my inner cynic out today.
Man, the Bushes are garnering* all the gold medals for dumb quotes and tweets these days.
________
*Did you catch that, Ann Althouse?
(Ann has a “thing” about the use of the word “garner”…)
I feel her pain on that. I’ve been noticing stupid trending words ever since “excellent” became endemic for a while back in the ‘eighties. And then there are corporate speak phrases like “to your point” and “exceeds expectations.” Yuck. These sorts of words and phrases come and go and professional writers who fall for them are just lazy and have no respect for the tool of their trade.
I’m reaching out to you; hope that didn’t land too hard….
“Why do Mexicans swim so well at the Olympics?”
“Their coaches tell them the other end of the pool is the American border.”
“But why will Mexicans never win at the Olympics?”
“Because Anyone who can run, jump or swim is already in America.”
Seriously though…. We don’t have numbers for 2020 yet, and there was a pandemic and all, but America took in 1,200,000 legal immigrants between 2016 and 2019, which is the most, by far, out of all the nations on Earth. “Exclusionary” in this context didn’t mean America didn’t take in immigrants, it didn’t even mean America took in less than normal, it meant ya’ll had a standard. And by that definition, all those wonderfully talented, foreign-born American athletes that medaled this year DID come to an America with an exclusionary policy.
Again, this is Jimmy the Greek, world class … I don’t know what to call it. Jeb is saying if we’d just let in more distance runners from Kenya and more high jumpers from Nigeria and more sprinters from Jamaica, we’d be golden. We all know white people can’t jump, or sprint or run a marathon. Come on, gang, let’s get us all some better ringers, what do you say!
Jesse Jackson’s admonition to “Stay out the Bushes” during the 2000 Democratic convention seems like better and better advice all the time given perfect hindsight. At least, in this context it looks good. Sunshine, dog’s backside, all that.
Then again, the thought of Al Gore as president gives me the willies, so…
Wait, is he implying that the “exclusionary” immigration practices were keeping out high achievers?