Ari Fleischer: 'These Leaks are Debilitating'

Ari Fleischer, who served as President George W. Bush's press secretary, agreed with newly installed White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci's assessment that leaks from inside the Oval Office need to stop — but said it might not be as easy to stop them as Scaramucci thinks.

"These leaks are debilitating; they're just terrible," Fleischer said Monday on Fox News Channel's "Your World with Neil Cavuto."

"I can't imagine a time when I ever turned on my colleagues and revealed publicly what they said to the president in the Oval Office," he said, but added that it "happens regularly in this administration."

Scaramucci's problem is that the leaks likely aren't coming from the communications staff, but from others in the administration, Fleischer said. That's because the communications team actually has to deal with the fallout of the leaks, so they aren't likely to create problems for themselves by leaking things they'll then have to talk to the press about.

Scaramucci said Sunday he's looking at cutting loose staff members who leak, but Fleischer said not so fast.

"Is he going to fire [son-in-law] Jared [Kushner]? Is he going to fire [daughter] Ivanka? Is he going to fire [Chief of Staff] Reince [Priebus]? Is he going to fire the national security adviser?" Fleischer asked, noting that he was using those people only as examples and was not implying any of them are the actual leakers.

But it could be Trump himself who is ultimately to blame for the chaos in his own White House, Fleischer said, noting that George W. Bush, and even Barack Obama, both wanted a "team" working under them, not rivals.

Trump, on the other hand, appears to enjoy "a little chaos under him," he said.

"The signal is sent engage in chaos," Fleischer said. "There's no downside to doing it. No question the behavior starts at the top."

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