Showtime debuted Sacha Baron Cohen’s latest series on Sunday, finally providing a partial to the question its title poses. “Who Is America?” The answer, on its face, will not surprise you: we are a nation of easy marks. Not merely easy, but willing.

Baron Cohen bases his career on that knowledge, but watching it in action was much more entertaining two decades ago in the heyday of “Da Ali G Show.” His HBO prank show became a cultural phenomenon before the omnipresence of social media and its accelerated mainstreaming of conspiracy theory as news, before a sitting president began making the denigration of objective journalism into a sport and before the proliferation of junk science as fact.

Back then cameras were not so prevalent as to persuade everyone that they were only one turned corner away from stardom. But today, being on camera is so natural and desirable to most of us that we are willing to say or do just about anything for a few of the 15 minutes we believe to be our birthright.

“Ali G” and the characters the show introduced, including Borat Sagdiyev and Brüno Gehard, also were born years before Project Veritas and InfoWars and other right-wing vehicles of disinformation made hidden camera hoaxing into something sinister.

All of which is to say, “Who Is America?” is not, as Showtime would like you to believe, “the most dangerous show in history.” At best, it is an occasionally funny one.

But to anyone who mourns the collective deterioration of our population’s capacity to engage in critical thought, but has no idea of how urgent of a crisis that happens to be, Baron Cohen’s new endeavor is less of a comedy than a fright show. “Who Is America?” A nation of pliable dullards ripe for the hacking.

“Who Is America?” was produced in secret, and its pre-show marketing largely consisted of publicized declarations of outrage by such right-wing figures as Joe Walsh, Sarah Palin and Roy Moore. Each attempted to transform their extreme embarrassment at having been duped by a British clown hiding behind layers of latex and spirit gum into some approximation of righteous anger at said comedian’s dishonesty.

Showtime, meanwhile, maintained the aura of mystery surrounding the series almost to the brink of its debut, revealing the title only a little more than a week prior. The network released the briefest of clips featuring one famous interview subject, Dick Cheney.

This in itself was a bit of flimflam Showtime’s part: “Hope you’ll tune in next week for an interview with me,” Cheney says in the video, only to be a no-show in the premiere.

You can’t blame “Who Is America?” for saving its biggest fish for later, because the famous politicians in the opener prove the problem of our collective gullibility just fine by themselves. In fact, although liberals may have gotten a hearty guffaw out of hearing Palin’s wailing about having been faked out by Baron Cohen, the very same character — Dr. Billy Wayne Ruddick Jr. PhD of Truthbrary.org — sat down for a conversation with none other than the honorable junior senator from Vermont, Bernie Sanders.

Prior to the premiere Billy Wayne tweeted a response to Palin’s accusation that he made fun disabled veterans. “I did NOT say I was a War Vet,” Ruddick’s “official” response reads, going on to explain that the service was in was “not military, but United Parcel”.

Nor does he make such assertions to Sanders, with whom he debates the merits of a universal healthcare plan. And when I say debate, what I mean is that Sanders very calmly shares statistics with Billy Wayne long after the interviewer’s line of questioning stops making sense. And when Sanders asks Billy Wayne to confirm that he is disabled, given that he is conducting the interview while seated on a motorized scooter, Baron Cohen’s character replies that no, he is not. “This here scooter is to preserve my body’s finite energy,” Billy Wayne says.

READ MORE: That viral “strangers on a plane” Twitter story: Not a rom-com but a horror show

One may be tempted to qualify Sanders’ appearance by pointing out that he acquitted himself well in the face of a person best be described as a few coconuts short of a beach vacation in Binomo.

But this fails to answer the question of why Sanders signed a release, allowing this interview to be broadcast. Did anyone on Sanders’ team vet Truthbrary.org the moment Billy Wayne mentioned it? Even if they thought he was genuine, what is to be gained from being seen in a televised debate with a guy whose site includes a page titled  “Obamanoids — For Real!”?

(To be fair, reportedly Baron Cohen almost fooled veteran news anchor Ted Koppel as part of his project. Koppel told The Hollywood Reporter that he was contacted to appear in a Showtime project titled “Age of Reason,” said to feature “conversations with distinguished experts in science and public policy, highlighting the brightest and most reputable minds on today’s most important topics.” Koppel, perhaps receiving brainwaves from his colleague Sam Donaldson, wised up before Baron Cohen could pull him too deeply into his game.)

A second character introduced in the premiere, an NPR shirt-wearing hyper-liberal named  Nira Cain-N’Degeocello, visits the opulent South Carolina home of wealthy Trump supporters he says are  “afflicted with white privilege.” But it soon becomes clear that his marks’ problem isn’t close-mindedness but over-correcting in the acceptance department. When Baron Cohen’s interviewer waxes on about encouraging his daughter Malala to “free bleed” on the American flag as a lesson, they simply nod and listen; when he chats about his wife’s ongoing affair with a dolphin, they don’t have any questions like, say, whether what they’re hearing is real.

This brings us to another answer to “Who Is America?”: we’re so aware of cameras, and desperate to have its focus upon us, that we will do and say anything without thinking of its possible permanence.

Demonstrating this is Baron Cohen’s third character Rick Sherman, an ex-con turned TV host who visits a Laguna Beach, California gallery to show his work, which is a series of capable but otherwise unextraordinary portraits rendered in feces and ejaculate.

Now, it’s entirely possible that the woman who runs the gallery might have been thinking she could have the next Andres Serrano on her hands. On the other hand, please.

This is a subject entirely aware of being on view, so obsessed with appearing erudite that while Rick is off camera, having excused himself to the facilities to commit another brown-and-white vision to paper, she addresses the camera like the host she was born to be.

“Who knew the world was capable of such oxymoronic paradoxical juxtapositions?” she muses. And this is before the homemade pubic hair paintbrush comes out.

Baron Cohen has pushed the limits of tolerant everyday people many times in the past, mostly in a way that makes them look reasonable or, at the very least, more intelligent than the put-ons he inflicts upon them. And this is perhaps one of the most depressing aspects about “Who Is America?”, its demonstration of how endemic our lack of analysis truly is. I’m not saying that gallery owner is a stupid woman, understand.

But her interview is an example of prizing exposure over lasting consequence. By that I’m not merely referring to the fact that she placated a man who not only handed her pieces of cardboard purportedly smeared with his own dried excrement, or waited to receive a fresh sample of his work, but that she decided she needed to share her expert observation as to why she needed to do so by uttering a sentence full of five dollar words that add up to absolute nonsense.

(Either that or she’s a friend of Baron Cohen’s and in on the gag. I hope it’s option two, as opposed to her actually legitimizing the artistic relevance of number two.)

A number of reviews of “Who Is America?” have pointed out that Baron Cohen’s sneaky deceit is no longer funny because the formerly insane viewpoints Baron Cohen’s tactics expose have been normalized.

This has always been the danger, but it’s one every sort of parody or satire contends with in the current climate. It’s difficult to lampoon leaders seeking to legislate ludicrous patches to crises like gun violence instead of adopting common sense solutions like stricter regulation.

Which brings us to the portion of “Who Is America?” guaranteed to dominate Monday’s gallery of crazy clips, fronted by Baron Cohen’s Col. Erran Morad, a self-styled Israeli anti-terrorism expert who calls himself “the terrorist terminator.”

The fake Mossad officer is there to promote his “Kinderguardians” program, a proposal that aims to train and arm toddlers in the classroom because, Moran says, arming teachers is crazy.

And this is the portion that has Walsh’s boxers in a bunch, because he joins House representatives Dana Rohrabacher and Joe Wilson in lending on-camera endorsements. Walsh’s comments are interwoven with a series of fake testimonials from the likes of Larry Pratt, executive director emeritus of the lobbying group Gun Owners of America and rape joke enthusiast.

Nobody forced Walsh to say, with gusto, “The way to stop a bad guy with is a good child with a gun. Happy shooting, kids!” If he didn’t want to say it, he wouldn’t have.

What Walsh might be upset about is being upstaged by Pratt, who earns some of the episode’s biggest laughs by reading the “science” behind the effectiveness of the fake program, revealing he doesn’t know the difference between human anatomy and hitmakers who grace Billboard’s pop charts.

Yes, “Who Is America?” gets mileage out of highlighting the callousness, sexism and extraordinary gullibility of conservatives, as Baron Cohen always has. But the things they say to him in disguise aren’t all that different than what they’d say on CNN, Fox, MSNBC or talk radio. Whatever power his comedy used to reveal is diminished by the fact that the charlatans no longer operate in secret.

Next week’s episode introduces one or two new characters, although I don’t imagine they do anything more “dangerous” than the four we met on Sunday. For a number of viewers who love Baron Cohen’s schtick, that won’t matter.

To them “Who Is America?” is precisely on brand, showing Americans famous and everyday reacting to bizarre situations with varying degrees of what we consider to be normalcy in a time where the baseline version of normal is constantly morphing and shifting.

To other viewers, however, “Who Is America?” is a confirmation that Baron Cohen has run some tests and can confirm there is limited and ever decreasing brain activity in this worsening patient we know as America. It is something to behold, that’s for sure. But I’m not sure it’s the stuff of groundbreaking comedy. It’s not even really news.

The post Sacha Baron Cohen reveals “Who Is America?” and the answer is terrifying appeared first on Salon.com.

When my book “Occult America,” a history of supernatural religions in the U.S., appeared in 2009, I was surprised to receive an admiring phone call from a conservative documentarian and financier. He professed deep interest in the book’s themes, and encouraged me in my next work, “One Simple Idea,” an exploration of positive-mind metaphysics in American life. His name was Stephen K. Bannon.

Although the media have characterized Bannon as the Disraeli of the dark side following his rise to power in the Trump administration, I knew him, and still do, as a deeply read and erudite observer of the American religious scene, with a keen appetite for mystical thought.

Ronald Reagan, a hero of his, was not dissimilar. As I’ve written in the Washington Post and elsewhere, Reagan, from the start of his political career in the 1950s up through the first term of his presidency, adopted phrasing and ideas from the writings of a Los Angeles-based occult scholar named Manly P. Hall (1901-1990), whose 1928 encyclopedia arcana “The Secret Teachings of All Ages” is among the most influential underground books in American culture.

President Trump himself has admiringly recalled his lessons in the mystic art of “positive thinking” from the Rev. Norman Vincent Peale, the Trump family’s longtime pastor, who popularized metaphysical mind-power themes in his 1952 mega-seller “The Power of Positive Thinking.”

What in the cosmos is going on? New Age and alternative spirituality are supposed to be the domain of patchouli-scented aisles of health food stores and bookshops that sell candles and pendulums, right? Well, not exactly.

There is a long-standing intersection between mysticism and conservatism in America. This marriage extends back to the late 19th century when globetrotting occultist and Russian noblewoman Madame H.P. Blavatsky depicted America as the catalyst for a revolution in human potential in her 1888 opus “The Secret Doctrine.” “It is in America that the transformation will take place,” Blavatsky wrote, “and has already silently commenced.”

Generations of occult writers echoed Blavatsky’s theme of America as a Holy Grail among nations, possessed of a “secret destiny,” as Manly P. Hall put it, and thus married esoteric spirituality to patriotic ideals. This partnership has flourished out of view of most mainstream observers—and significantly impacted American culture, including the look of our currency.

In 1935, then-Secretary of Agriculture Henry A. Wallace, a former Republican and mystical seeker who went on to become Franklin Roosevelt’s second vice president, approached FDR with a novel idea: mint a coin with the mysterious reverse side of the Great Seal of the United States—the eye-and-pyramid surrounded by the Latin maxim “God Smiles on Our New Order of the Ages.” Both men were Freemasons with a taste for portentous imagery—and were on the lookout for epic, unifying symbols for the recovering nation. (Wallace had spoken of the need for a “New Deal of the Ages.”) Roosevelt was so taken with the 1782 image, with its Masonic undertones and message that worldly achievement is incomplete without higher ethics, that he personally supervised its installation on the back of the dollar bill, making a previously arcane insignia into an indelible symbol of the republic.

President George H.W. Bush brought new attention — and unintended infamy — to the concept of a “New World Order.” In his Sept. 11, 1990, speech to a joint session of Congress, Bush sought to celebrate the possibilities of international trade and cooperation that could follow a swift victory in the first Gulf War: “Out of these troubled times, our fifth objective—a new world order—can emerge … An era in which the nations of the world, East and West, North and South, can prosper and live in harmony.” Little was he aware that his use of the term would inspire a generation of conspiracy theorists to notions of a hidden, sinister global plan.

Conservative metaphysics extend beyond geopolitics. One of Richard Nixon’s confidants — in addition to the Rev. Peale, whose church he also attended—was insurance magnate W. Clement Stone, a right-wing activist, benefactor of the famous ESP lab at Duke University, and collaborator to Napoleon Hill, author of the mind-metaphysics classic “Think and Grow Rich.”

Most liberals and centrists find these kinds of associations jarring and a bit creepy. Thoughtful people are suspicious of mixing Rasputin-like intrigue with American politics. And with good reason. As Vice President Dan Quayle once put it—and he was specifically referring to Rasputin — “people that are really very weird can get into sensitive positions and have a tremendous impact on history.” (It should be noted, however, that the “mad monk” soberly cautioned the tsar against getting entangled in World War I.)

Critics fear that a sense of spiritual preordainment can produce reckless or dangerous policy choices. Yet such episodes in American history have traditionally had less to do with religious impulses than the kinds of hubris that once drove “the best and the brightest” into Vietnam, or moved senators from both parties to support President George W. Bush’s tragic rush into Iraq, based on the cynical calculus that a quick and tidy war would net a political victory.

Rather than fomenting secrecy or subterfuge, America’s embrace of esotericism is often characterized by a chin-out earnestness, something that many observers and conspiracy-mongers miss. “You can call it mysticism if you want to,” Reagan told the Conservative Political Action Conference in 1974, “but I have always believed that there was some divine plan that placed this great continent between two oceans to be sought out by those who were possessed of an abiding love of freedom and a special kind of courage.” In announcing his candidacy in 1979, Reagan declared: “To me our country is a living, breathing presence, unimpressed by what others say is impossible . . . and that man is capable of improving his circumstances beyond what we are told is fact.” Reagan often returned to such themes, echoing Hall’s 1944 book “The Secret Destiny of America.”

This rhetoric may sound flighty, but that, too, is part of our heritage. Historically, I prefer the cadences of offbeat idealism to the rampant ugliness of our current president’s Twitter insults, or the low-octane, visionless speechmaking that burdened Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

Conservative presidencies have not cornered the market on the otherworldly. During the 2016 campaign, I was surprised that no one revisited an episode from Bill Clinton’s first term, when then first lady Hillary Clinton was accused of holding “séances” in the White House—a term misapplied to her visioning sessions with New Age teacher Jean Houston, a pioneer of the human-potential movement. Houston, whom I’ve published, didn’t quite know how to explain to reporters that when she guided the first lady in dialogues with her political hero Eleanor Roosevelt, they were not summoning spirits but rather conducting creativity and value-defining exercises. President Clinton was cool toward these tête-à-têtes. Houston told me that the president once sat in on one of their sessions. When the guru told him he was an “undeveloped shaman,” he stood up and left the room.

Bill Clinton took a similarly dim view of parapsychology. During a period of post-Cold War cost cutting in 1995, he eliminated the CIA’s budget for its psychic-spying program. Jimmy Carter, by contrast, admired the “remote viewing” operation. The year of Clinton’s cuts, Carter told a group of Emory University students that during his presidency, clairvoyant spies helped identify the coordinates of a crashed Soviet spy plane in Central Africa, netting a significant intelligence gain.

Off-the-grid practices should come as no surprise to students of politics. People in power always import values, customs and attitudes from their backgrounds—sometimes the religious conservatism of a Mike Pence and other times the Southern Californian vibes of a Ron and Nancy Reagan, with their enthusiasm for astrology, psychics and UFOs (Reagan reported sightings as both an actor and governor). Reagan alone was at ease swapping stories with New Age neighbors at Hollywood pool parties, while simultaneously maintaining a sincere, and mutual, affection for evangelicals. He was the model American religionist.

Even conservative evangelicals today borrow from American mysticism. When Pat Robertson speaks of the “Law of Reciprocity” (did you miss that in Scripture?) he is reprocessing the “Law of Attraction,” a concept popularized by the book and movie “The Secret,” but rooted in an American mystical tradition extending back to 1854, when a spirit medium named Andrew Jackson Davis coined the term.

Davis’ career illuminates how historically deep these entanglements go. Called the “Poughkeepsie Seer” for his Hudson Valley, New York, hometown, Davis was naturally controversial—with one prominent defender, who attested that his channeled trances were an authentic telegraph to the spirit world. The medium’s advocate was a Rev. George Bush, a first cousin, four times removed, to the Bush presidential family. The Rev. Bush caused a stir in 1845 by leaving the Presbyterian Church to become a minister in the Church of the New Jerusalem, an ecclesiastical body based on the ideas of Swedish mystic-scientist Emanuel Swedenborg. Bush wrote admiringly of Davis, and attended his séances (a term Davis also coined in its occult sense) along with a dubious journalist named Edgar Allan Poe.

Today, cable television producers and radio hosts often urge me to postulate some kind of occult “pact” between the Bushes and the dark side (cue up Skull and Bones). But such things are fantasy. The truth is, Americans have always been, well, a little strange. As a historian, I feel affection for that aspect of American life. Shadowy figures have long hung around the fringes of power in many nations; but rarely have they done so with the ingenuousness and transparency of those I’ve been considering.

If there is a central principle in American life, one valued across our political spectrum, it is a belief in the protection of the individual search for meaning. The presence and persistence of esoteric and unusual religious ideas in our political culture, including in its most conservative quarters, serves as evidence that that core principle is still working. In the U.S. military, religiously observant service members and veterans can now choose among more than 65 “emblems of belief,” including pentagrams, druidic symbols and every variety of mystical insignia. We are truly one nation under many gods — a fact that unites us across our fractured political divide.

The post Steve Bannon and the occult: The right wing’s long, strange love affair with New Age mysticism appeared first on Salon.com.

In so-called normal times and under business-as-usual administrations the job of White House Press Secretary doesn’t lead to renown or infamy. Those terms — normal, business as usual — don’t apply to Donald Trump’s tenure in the Oval Office, and his press secretaries have become household names mostly for the wrong reasons.

Sean Spicer’s claim to fame is being a terrible liar and an even worse dancer. Sarah Huckabee Sanders distinguished herself by reducing the once-frequent White House press corps briefings to very occasional insult exchanges peppered by lies.  Her successor Stephanie Grisham, meanwhile, spends her time appearing on the One America News Network, Sinclair Broadcast Group stations, and Fox News instead of serving as a liaison between the press corps and the Oval Office.

More than 300 days have passed since the White House has held a news conference with reporters. In light of the recent saber-rattling between the U.S. military and Iran, that number is stunning. Times such as these require an official briefings from the White House and the military, who are charged with a duty to convey information to citizens via the press corps with clarity.

Such times also present tremendous opportunities to spin the administration’s actions in a persuasive light, leading citizens to have confidence in its actions. Indeed, Ari Fleischer used his position as George W. Bush’s press secretary to sell a war that has been dragging on now for 17 years.

On Friday, Fleischer appeared in Pasadena to talk about the upcoming “American Experience” profile “George W. Bush,” part of PBS’ day of press conferences at the Television Critics Association winter press tour. This is where Salon sat down with him for an interview that took place before the “American Experience” panel.

Right around the same time, 13 former White House press secretaries, military and foreign service officials published a letter on CNN calling for the restoration of regular press briefings.

“An informed press corps strengthens our ability to govern,” the letter states. “Yes, presidents are now able to communicate directly via the internet, social media and tweets. But most Americans will learn about the work of the White House in the reports they see, read, and hear in what we collectively call ‘the press.'”

The statement then observes that regular White House briefings generally lead to better and more responsible reporting, later adding, “In times of military conflict and international crisis, these briefings take on even more importance. Americans want to know the latest developments and seek the truth. On social media, wild rumors can fly, and our adversaries can manipulate disinformation to their advantage. This is now well documented.”

“For that reason, among many, the country needs trusted sources of information delivered on a timely and regular schedule. That is the fundamental responsibility of people who serve as spokesmen and women for presidents, cabinet secretaries and other high-ranking government officials.”

White House spokesman Hogan Gidley responded to the letter by calling its writers “D.C. establishment swamp creatures.”

Among those who signed are Victoria Clarke, who worked under Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and Scott McClellan, who worked under Bush as his press secretary.

Missing from that list are McClellan’s fellow Bush-era press secretaries Dana Perino and Fleischer. Perino is now a Fox News anchor, and Fleischer is a contributor at Fox News.

In this one-on-one conversation with Salon, Fleischer talked about his view of the press’ relationship with the White House in the current climate and was asked to reflect on his time as press secretary to the second President Bush, specifically with regard to conveying false information about Saddam Hussein possessing weapons of mass destruction that led us to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Please note that this interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

 I don’t know if you read the recent Twitter challenge from authors Don Winslow and Stephen King to Stephanie Grisham.

No, I haven’t.

 They stated that if she would hold a press briefing, they’ll give $200,000 to St. Jude’s Charity. This was a serious offer, speaking to the fact that there has not been a White House press briefing for more than 300 days.

Yeah.

You held that job and observed the traditional means of operating as an information bridge between the White House and the press corps. So what do you think about the fact that the last couple of press secretaries have been not only less approachable, but granting less access to official information coming out of the White House?

I’m a traditionalist, so it concerns me a lot and there’s a tremendous value to the briefing. There certainly was during the Bush era, and historically now, the advantage to a president is you have people reinforce his message and buttress what he says. The advantage to the country is it gives reporters a chance to ask more probing, longer follow-up questions.

But everything’s changed now in this era of hostility between President Trump and the press. And I’ve never seen such rancor and hostility in both directions. And so as much as I’m a traditionalist and see the benefits of the briefing, I don’t know that if they brought the briefing back in this current environment, it would serve the press, the public or the press secretary any good cause. I just think it would turn the room into nothing but a TV show that was full of nasty arguments both directions.

I’m not going to disagree with the partisan rancor in this country. That is abundantly clear. But I do not believe that what you’re saying about the animosity in terms of the press, particularly the actual people in that briefing room, is justified.

 I say that because there is a habit nowadays, as we’re consuming media, of conflating the people who are on the ground and in that room doing their job as journalists and asking questions, with punditry. You know this. You’re a pundit.  So I understand that you’re going to have a viewpoint on this topic that’s going to be a bit skewed. But I just want to say that when you’re blaming both sides, I need to disagree with that.

 The questions that are being asked are probing and they’re certainly pressing tough issues with the president. But I would also say that the reaction the president has had, and the press secretaries from Sean Spicer to Sarah Huckabee Sanders and now what we seen of Stephanie Grisham, that is where the rancor has showed up. And you can call me biased on the behalf of those journalists, but when I’m watching the news, the rancor is really elevated from the [White House] side.

 Just one other factor I’ll mention – and I’ll come back to that.  But there’s another big factor here that’s changed things. And that’s the accessibility of the president himself versus President Obama, President Bush, President Clinton. No predecessor has been as open and accessible to the press as the president himself. And that is the primary job of the White House press corps, is to ask the president hard questions. So he’s doing it on virtually a daily basis, whether it’s a good day for him or a bad day —

As he’s getting on a helicopter with very loud rotors where he limits amount of time spent answering questions.

—that matters. I mean, if you’re, if you’re sitting there, they’re getting seven, eight, nine, 10 questions —

They’re getting in a couple of questions repeated seven, eight, nine, 10 times…And he’s not really answering those questions.

 I don’t think that’s the case.

 I’m just saying that there’s a difference between those formal briefings, which as you know, you have a controlled environment that you, as the press secretary, used to your advantage. Just in terms of being able to distill information accurately and effectively to the press.  What you did, and I’m not saying this was right, but you distilled the message to the press, and the press gave it credibility and repeated it. I’ll also say the press should have questioned you even more. I would say that to every press secretary.

 But the role that the press secretary plays carries a certain level of respect with the press. By saying Trump is more accessible, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the press is getting a better value in the information he’s sharing.

That’s on the press, not on the president. They have daily access and the press can get out of it whatever they seek. And I don’t think venue matters. They have access to the president, which is an improvement over prior White Houses for the press. So given the fact that the president is so accessible, I still wish as a traditionalist there were the briefing, but I’m realist enough to know that that rancor, that hostility would turn into a nasty red hot TV show where the few grandstanders in the room will spoil it for the lot of them, particularly print reporters who really do just want to get questions answered.

[CNN White House correspondent] Jim Acosta, for example. He acts like a pundit when he should be a correspondent. He states his opinion. He tells the White House what they should be concluding, and I think it’s that type of grandstanding along with the breakdown of the media in the modern era that has led to such polarizing media outlets. We used to have a much more dedicated, neutral fact-finding press corps and now, in both directions, the press takes stands for and against. And I think that’s a reality that’s going to live long after President Trump as well. There’s just been a breakdown on what the media represents that’s changed with this polarization. All of it in the Trump era leads me to think that as traditional as I am, and as constructive as the briefing can be, it makes little to no sense to fiddle with the Trump administration.

At the same time you have to also consider who is that in that room. You’re talking about the breakdown in the media. But there are people in that room who aren’t actually, and I am saying this politely, traditional media. They’re not even really media at all. The White House has invited propaganda machines into that room.

They’ve always been there.

So you’re saying this is normal, that you let in the likes of One America News, conspiracy bloggers ,and newsletter writers, you let those in during the Bush era?

 Oh yeah. I mean, my approach during the Bush era was the press secretary should not be the person who decides who was or who was not media. There were people who worked for me who made that decision based on logistics and Secret Service reviews. I don’t think it’s helpful for the press secretary to decide you are acceptable as a journalist. That’s a thin line on thin ice. So I had people in there who were far, far left pundits and then far, far right pundits. That’s the way it goes.  I’d spend most of my time taking questions from the front couple of rows, which is where the traditional mainstream outlets sit.

The difference now is that when Trump has appeared and asked questions, he’s gone to the “friendlier” outlets that aren’t actual news organizations. And that’s something as press secretary when you would brief Bush, my guess is, and you can clarify this, but I suspect you encouraged him to take questions from the traditional news outlets that carried the most weight.

He did, regularly. What really changed is the internet and social media has created profound changes in the way the media operates. And then breakdown of the media in terms of the polarization that the rest of the nation is going through as well.

When I was there, there was no Facebook, there was no Twitter, it was the dawn of the social media internet era. Toward the end of the Bush years, Twitter existed and Facebook existed, but I remember thinking if we ever wanted to produce a White House video, we would have released it through government channels and I’d have been hammered for creating government propaganda.

Technology changed, and the Obama administration regularly released YouTube videos and it was widely accepted. It was measured then by how many clicks it got as a measure of whether it was popular, whether it was successful. Gone was the notion that this could be propaganda even though the only difference was who carried it: YouTube versus the government channel.

Technology has really changed everything for the media probably in many ways that are positive in many ways that are negative and we’re still flushing that out.

Let’s talk about that. A lot of your tweets and recent interviews have been quoted. You are getting on Fox News and saying a lot of things in the moment, that you’re having thrown back in your face and you’re being asked to defend yourself.

 I’m talking about everything that’s happening in Iran, the missile strikes in Iraq, and all the reaction around this new conflict in the Middle East. People have taken issue with your recent initial reaction of  “we’ll be greeted as liberators,” which is what you said in 2003.  After that, there were marches in the streets of Iran showing that not to be the case.

 Looking at this part of a 17-year war – one which you had role in starting – it’s curious to me that now, 17 years later that you wouldn’t look back and observe that maybe we shouldn’t be doing this, maybe we shouldn’t be increasing tensions with Iran.

Yeah, I’d do it the same way I always have. And that’s to say what I believe. It’s not complicated.

Not even in hindsight?

First off, you have to make the distinction between the military operation, the war itself, and then the occupation. The aftermath fact is from March of 2003 till roughly July, August of 2003, we were greeted as liberators. You could go to cafes and downtown Baghdad, sit outside and have meals. It was a peaceful city. People welcomed the Americans. Starting in the fall of 2003 predominantly, that’s when the occupation turned terrible. And that’s when we start to lose many more lives. And that’s when the tide turned.

So two things can be right at the same time. We were greeted as liberators, and then a guerrilla war became a highly successful guerrilla operation. And we didn’t handle the occupation, right? We handled the military invasion. We didn’t handle the occupation.

But I’m talking about the information that was dispensed to the press before the war.

I’ll get back to that. The other big thing was the issue of weapons of mass destruction. This is an entirely legitimate issue. Of course, I faithfully and accurately reported to the American people precisely what the CIA concluded. The CIA concluded the Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, biological or chemical, no if, ands, or buts.

And the UN investigators went in and didn’t find any conclusive evidence of WMDs.

 The CIA said that he had them. That was the CIA’s conclusion. And that was what the president relied on when he made the decision to go to war.

Now, tragically, that intelligence turned out to be wrong, and we all acknowledge that that’s what led to the creation of the war. They called the Robb-Silberman Commission, a bipartisan investigation into how and why it went wrong. Their conclusion was it was an intelligence failure. That’s the heart of it.

And to this day, I’m certain that if the CIA had said to President Bush, “We don’t know. We’re not sure if he has weapons of mass destruction or not,” there never would have been [a war].

And the tragedy is the information turned out to be wrong and we went to war based on a wrong conclusion by the CIA.

[Editor’s Note: Fleischer elaborated on this in a Twitter thread back in March 2019. The Washington Post Fact Checker column followed up with a closer examination of its veracity.]

Famously, you said that you didn’t support Trump in the election. But you do now. At what point do you look at the events that are either connected to Trump or that he’s precipitated in terms of tensions not just between party but also between the people of this country and say to yourself, “Enough is enough”?  Or, “You know what? Looking back, I might not have been correct in this initial assessment”? At what point do you maybe reassess and actually say in public, “Maybe I wasn’t correct?”  Do you apologize for anything?

In the primary, I voted for somebody else. I wanted to be for him in the general against Hillary Clinton. And as I watched it all unfold, I ultimately left my ballot blank at the presidential level and voted for him all the levels below president. And as I have watched President Trump, there are many times I have criticized him and there are many times that I have praised him. I’m not afraid to be independent and call it as I see it.

I regularly defended [Special Counsel Robert Mueller] because I know Bob Mueller. I know what a man of integrity is. I was one of few, if not the only person, on Fox News from start to finish to defend Bob and Bob Mueller’s honor and integrity and how he conducted that investigation. And I’ve never hesitated to criticize the president on Twitter or on Fox News.

. . . So I don’t hide what I think or say. And I think one of the highest duties you have having once worked at the White House is no longer to be a spokesperson for any one president or cause. That’s what I used to do with tremendous pride. Now the more important thing is to try to shine a light on what’s right, what’s wrong, what worked, what didn’t, and explain it.

And that’s what I’ve tried to do with President Trump. There are things that he’s done that . . . I don’t support his manner. His style is not mine. It’s not like that any of the people that I’ve worked for. It’s too truculent. It’s too offensive.

But I’ll also point out that many of the criticisms against him are too truculent and too offensive. He’s been called Adolf Hitler, he’s been called Mussolini. As soon as he was the president-elect, a movement [arose] that was based on the word “resistance,” which was the word used against the Nazis in France. . . . Talk about going beyond the norms. These are all actions beyond the norms.

But do you believe that he has been a normal president? You’ve worked for a man who I think people would say operated within the social contract of what we expect from a president.

He’s the president that the American people through the electoral college elected. And I see a lot of people who rejected that, who tried to overturn it in the electoral college, if they could have, who are now trying to overturn it through impeachment if they can. And I think that is equally, if not more so, violative of the norms that I believe are important to the traditions that George Bush represented and the people that I used to work for represented. So I think there’s way too much hostility in the system. But it’s on every side. It’s not just President Trump.

Just to clarify, what would you say those norms are?

To treat people you disagree with, with respect. When President Obama was reelected in 2012 I tweeted the next morning, congratulations to President Obama. He’s my president and he’s all our president. I think that’s the way we should all be. That’s how you show respect for the American people and the decisions made within our constitutional system. I didn’t vote for President Obama. I voted for Mitt Romney, but I recognized he’s my president. As soon as President Trump was elected, you had this massive movement on Twitter and social media saying, “not my president.”

That same thing happened with Obama.

But not by me. You’re asking me questions of me. That’s why I said to you, I instantly tweeted, he’s my president. I wanted to strike that civil tone that much more representative of the Bush family’s tone. So if you’re asking about my behavior, I can just tell you what I’ve done. And that’s represented by what I believe about President Bush. and how you treat people, and how you should be civil with people even if you disagree with them.

You’re a contributor to Fox News and a lot of people have pointed out that Fox is one of the less respectful, less civil, less considerate proponents of discourse right now, particularly in politics. So when you’re talking about respect and civility — obviously they employ you, so there’s only so much you can say — but what do you see that they’re contributing to this conversation?

Well, I think you have to make a distinction between opinion shows and news shows.

Viewers don’t make that distinction.

But I think there is a distinction between the opinion shows and the news shows, and the news shows are superb. I think Bret Baier’s show at six o’clock is one of the best, most fair shows in journalism, and their daytime shows as well. I wake up in the morning, I watch CNN in the morning, and I watch Fox in the afternoon because I like the balance. I want to hear what all parties are saying and I think you can make many of the same points you made about Fox, about CNN and certainly about MSNBC.

So that’s part of that polarization, the breakdown in the media that I was talking about. But I also suggest if you see the things that I say on Fox, it is very much an independent voice and a voice that reminds people about the importance of civility.

This is the point I was making to you about Bob Mueller and I could give you dozens of examples where I’ve said things that were critical of the president and said things that are supportive of the president. I don’t have to be polarizing.

The “American Experience” two-part biographical profile “George W. Bush” with Fleischer airs Monday, May 4, and Tuesday, May 5 at 9 p.m., on PBS member stations.

The post Why Ari Fleischer is against resurrecting the extinct White House press briefings appeared first on Salon.com.