issue, the president taking his private conversations are different from the press secretary gaggle which traditionally include a wide range of outlets. obviously, it comes after the president labeled enemy of the people, it looks like retribution, rather than criticism. and clearly, they re trying to put pressure on certain organizations, you know, because they don t like what they re seeing. they re very right to criticize the press. there s no violation of the first amendment to criticize them. but you have to see this for what it is, it s a campaign that delegitimized certain press outlets they re saying it s fake because they don t like it. and trying to discredit the organizations that are particularly finding out things about them that they don t like. rob, mr. fleischer went on to say he s never seen a president meet so often with the press corps and that he seems to be tremendously acceptable to the
americans, which is you work hard, you should be able to get ahead. that was the focus of the speech and i thought he did it well. well, fleischer, what did you speak about that? well, the tribute to the sergeant. the down side is i think that s the only thing people are going to remember of this speech. but it was a marvelous tribute. six years in, president bush and president obama s approval ratings about the same according to chuck todd. almost identical. and you do face that tune-out factor. i think the tune-out is overrated. three years is a long time for presidents to still have power and presidents have power. when you look at president clinton s last two years in office, he got a lot of legislation enacted through a republican congress, able to
everybody. mark, i was really i was really surprised the other day. fleischer and nicole wallace saying things are harder now, the environment is tougher now than it was in bush s fifth or sixth year? by the way, that was really ugly times between katrina and iraq and the sectarian violence over there. if you re going to have bush s people, especially ari who s always been really tough on the white house, saying this environment is so bad, you do really start to wonder. how does any president i m not defending the president here, republicans. you have to look at this environment, though. how does any president survive living in this hot house? any administration for eight years? what s the environment you re describing? is it the media? i m talking 24/7 media. i m talking about blocgs lookin at every step of the way. i m talking you know, we
privacy is protected while protecting the security of americans, and of course congress is involved, they reauthorized the program, members of the intelligence committee are briefed regularly. so yes, much different from warrantless wiretapping. mr. fleischer? yeah, you know president bush has been great so president obama action he ought to act the same way. the fact of the matter is president obama is keeping us safe and doing it the right way. the house he inherited, the foundation upon which our homeland security is built action with the changes of a couple curtains, put in a few more audits is the bush structure. it certainly is, and the president deserves credit for it. that s why i ve been as a republican praising president obama as the anti-terror steps he s taken. it is what george bush put in place. wait just one second. there is a big difference here. it s not about righteousness.
boy were they amazing. welcome to early start, i m zoraida sambolin. and i m john berman. 5:00 a.m. in the east. what we re all talking about is morning is politics. after 36 hours joined at the hip, mitt romney and his new running mate are going their separate ways today. the former massachusetts governor says he s happy with his new teammate. at one point, ryan teared up with emotion during a stop in wisconsin. on 60 minutes, romney praised his vp pick for being a lot like him. of course, the president is weighing in, too. this is a man who s dedicated the last 14 years working in washington in ways that are not highly partisan. this is a man who s also analytical. he s a policy guy. people know him as a policy guy. that s one of the reasons he has such respect on both sides of the aisle. i m a policy guy, believe it or not. i love policy. i love solving tough problems. congressman ryan is a decent man. he is a family man. he s an articulate spokesman for gove