Bush vs. Trump? Former President Criticizes POTUS For Stances On News Media, Russia, Islam

Former President George W. Bush seemed to criticize President Donald Trump in an interview with the Today Show Monday morning, saying the news media and freedom of religion are crucial to American democracy. There should also be an investigation into the alleged Russian hacking into the U.S. election, Bush said.

Those are all issues that Trump has dealt with in his first month in office. He has called the Russia story “fake news,” a distraction and even fabrication by the press, despite the fact that the CIA said in December Russia interfered with U.S. elections; he's been hostile toward the news media, which culminated in his announcement last weekend that he'd boycott the White House Correspondents Dinner, a traditional event showing goodwill between the press and the president; and his administration has been revising an executive order that would temporarily ban visitors and immigrants from seven majority-Muslim nations.

“I considered the media to be indispensable to democracy,” Bush said after Matt Lauer asked whether the former president ever considered the news media to be the enemy of the American people, a reference to a tweet from Trump.

“We need the media to hold people like me to account,” Bush added. “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 it be elsewhere.”

He also said he spent time “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."

With regard to Russia, Bush said, "I think we all need answers,” although he did not specify whether the investigation should be done by a special prosecutor.

After the terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers in 2001, Bush famously denounced the extremists while defending the right of Muslims to worship freely in the U.S., a statement that has been referenced to contrast Trump’s immigration policies and rhetoric about Muslims. Sixteen years after the 9/11 attacks, Bush echoed his original sentiment in the interview with Lauer.

“It’s important for all of us to recognize one of our great strengths is for people to be able to worship the way they want to… a bedrock of our nation is the right to worship freely,” Bush said.

Watch the full interview here.