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Bush weighs in on free press

Faster horses

Well-known member
Bush never said 'Boo' in 8 years of Obama presidency and now he says this. He has disappointed me greatly. I wish he had just stuck to promoting his book~which I would have read, but not now. How could he not think Obama was addicted to power and money?

Bush said it was important for America to have an independent media landscape"...he of all people should know we don't have independent media.
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George W. Bush: A free press checks the ‘addictive’ power of the presidency

 Former President George W. Bush said that power of the presidency can be addictive and that an independent media is necessary to keep things in check.

“I consider the media to be indispensable to democracy,” Bush said in a “Today” show interview Monday morning. “We need an independent media to hold people like me to account. Power can be very addictive and it can be corrosive, and it’s important for the media to call to account people who abuse their power, whether it be here or elsewhere.”

Bush’s comments contrast sharply with those of President Trump, who has declared war on the mainstream media, which he has branded “the enemy of the American people.” On Thursday, Trump used a speech at a conservative conference to go on a lengthy diatribe against the media. On Friday, the BBC, CNN, New York Times, Los Angeles Times and Politico were all abruptly barred from an off-camera briefing with press secretary Sean Spicer.

During his “Today” show interview, Bush said it was important for America to have an independent media landscape in order to pressure other countries into embracing the same.

“One of the things I spent a lot of time doing was trying to convince a person — like Vladimir Putin, for example — to accept the notion of an independent press. It’s kind of hard to tell others to have an independent free press when we’re not willing to have one ourselves,” he said.

“It’s hard to unify the country when the president is so split up. When I was president, you mattered a lot more because there was, like, three of you,” Bush told interviewer Matt Lauer. “Now there’s all kinds of information being bombarded out, and people can say things anonymously. It’s just a different world.”


Bush also said he wanted answers regarding Russia’s connection to the White House but wasn’t sure a special prosecutor was the correct tactic. He said he would defer to the judgment of Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, on how to investigate the matter.

When asked about his thoughts on Trump’s executive order banning entry to the United States from seven majority Muslim countries, Bush said, “I am for an immigration policy that’s welcoming and upholds the law.”

“A bedrock of our freedom is a right to worship freely,” said Bush when discussing his response to the Sept. 11 attacks. “I understood right off the bat that this was an ideological conflict. People who murder the innocent are not religious people.”

Both Bush and his father, former President George H.W. Bush, declined to endorse Trump in the general election, a striking snub of Trump when he was the Republican nominee. The younger Bush’s comments on the “Today” show came amid a series of media appearances promoting a new book, “Portraits of Courage: A Commander in Chief’s Tribute to America’s Warriors”
 

Traveler

Well-known member
W-on-Today.jpg
 

Tam

Well-known member
Who is the source of the article as it has some glaring liberal lies in it. Nobody was ban from the Press gaggle Spicer had the meeting in his office as Trump was speaking at the same time at CPAC. He called in the White House POOL of reporters that is made up of different media outlets everyday he does not pick them some WH media assoc. does. He had a few extra seats so he invited a few more in. They is no rules saying the media have to be let into Spicer's office so the cry babies need to grow up and wait until it is their turn to be in the media pool for the day. The rest of the story is a bit overstated but that is no surprise as everything is going to be overstated if they can make it look like Bush was bashing Trump.
 

Faster horses

Well-known member
Tam said:
Who is the source of the article as it has some glaring liberal lies in it. Nobody was ban from the Press gaggle Spicer had the meeting in his office as Trump was speaking at the same time at CPAC. He called in the White House POOL of reporters that is made up of different media outlets everyday he does not pick them some WH media assoc. does. He had a few extra seats so he invited a few more in. They is no rules saying the media have to be let into Spicer's office so the cry babies need to grow up and wait until it is their turn to be in the media pool for the day. The rest of the story is a bit overstated but that is no surprise as everything is going to be overstated if they can make it look like Bush was bashing Trump.

It is all over the internet. You can google it and find it in many places. Here is one:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/02/27/george-w-bush-critiques-trump-on-travel-ban-free-press/?utm_term=.32a74b045f81
 

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