Poor Jeb Bush.
This Republican primary was supposed to be his to lose. Instead, he's getting owned by Donald Trump.
How badly is Trump owning Bush?
So badly that JebBush.com leads to Trump's site instead.
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Bush's campaign never bothered to register JebBush.com and has been using Jeb2016.com instead. For the first several months of the campaign, that didn't hurt the campaign; as of late September, JebBush.com was benevolently blank, according to the internet archive site the Wayback Machine.
But sometime last fall, someone appears to have noticed an opportunity, and arranged for the Australian company that owns the domain name to redirect visitors to DonaldJTrump.com. (The Trump campaign denies involvement, for what it's worth.)
The domain was last updated on October 20, 2015, according to ownership records, but media outlets started noticing the prank in early December.
At the time, it just seemed like a characteristic Jeb bumble: How, after immigration reform activists snapped up TedCruz.com and CarlyFiorina.org became a testament to the layoffs Fiorina ordered at Hewlett-Packard, could Bush's people not lock up JebBush.com? But after the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary, Jeb Bush and his campaign have become objects of a weird kind of pity.
Bush told a New Hampshire audience to "please clap" after he delivered a line; it was a joke, but also kind of wasn't. A video captured him lighting up with joy when a voter tells him, "You might swing my vote," then coming over to envelop the poor voter in a hug. (The video was uploaded to YouTube with the title "Jeb hug — sad times.")
Even late-night comedy host Samantha Bee felt almost too sorry for him to mock him. Almost.
In this light, the Trump website prank takes on a level of unexpected pathos. Poor Jeb.
