Former George W. Bush's declaration that the media is "indispensable to democracy" isn't necessarily a condemnation of President Donald Trump calling news organizations "the enemy of the people," Bush's former White House spokesman Ari Fleischer tells Newsmax TV.
"He was giving his principled answers to questions about freedom of the press and things of that nature, and of course in this environment, everybody will take that as a reflection on Trump," Fleischer said Monday to Steve Malzberg on "America Talks Live."
"The two of them are very different people, cut from very different cloths and it doesn't surprise me if they have different styles … of how they approach the world."
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On NBC's "Today" show, Bush told host Matt Lauer the media is "indispensable to democracy" because "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."
Fleischer, president of Fleischer Sports Communications, said the news business has changed dramatically in the past few decades — another reason why the two presidents may have different styles.
Bush's presidency marked "the last era where the anchors on the three big networks were household names and people knew who they were and they still largely kept the attention of the American people," he told Malzberg.
"The trend to go to a diffused number of directions on cable and on radio and on internet started earlier although the internet really accelerated in the Bush era and that's why I think he was reflecting.
"Now most people probably couldn't tell you who the names of the network anchors are and the audience for those three shows are becoming even less since Bush left office. So it was different times communications-wise, but George Bush's style is not to punch the president in the nose."