Liberty and Leadership
TFAS has reached 53,000 students and professionals through their academic programs, fellowships and seminars. Representing more than 140 countries, TFAS alumni are courageous leaders throughout the world – forging careers in politics, government, public policy, business, philanthropy, law and the media. Join TFAS President, Roger Ream, as he reconnects with these outstanding alumni to share experiences, swap career stories, and find out what makes their leadership journey unique. The Liberty and Leadership podcast is produced at Podville Media in Washington, D.C. If you have a comment or question for the show, please drop us an email at podcast@TFAS.org.
Liberty and Leadership
From the White House to the Crisis Room: An Inside Look with Ari Fleischer
Roger welcomes Ari Fleischer, former White House Press Secretary under President George W. Bush and an esteemed communication and crisis management leader.
They discuss Fleischer’s firsthand experience of the September 11 attacks while serving as White House Press Secretary, reflecting on the immediate chaos and the key lessons learned in crisis management, particularly the importance of staying calm under pressure. Plus, the modernization of the White House Press Room, the significance of diverse voices in journalism, why supporting Israel aligns with American values, and the balance of power between the executive and legislative branches of government.
After leaving the White House in 2003, Ari continued to offer valuable insights into the intricacies of government and the media through his company, Fleischer Communications. He’s also a highly sought-after public speaker and a New York Times bestselling author. His latest book “Suppression, Deception, Snobbery, and Bias,” was published in 2022.
Ari will be the keynote speaker at our Annual Conference in Naples, Florida, on March 6-8, 2025.
The Liberty + Leadership Podcast is hosted by TFAS president Roger Ream and produced by Podville Media. If you have a comment or question for the show, please email us at podcast@TFAS.org. To support TFAS and its mission, please visit TFAS.org/support.
Welcome to the Liberty and Leadership Podcast, a conversation with TFAS alumni, faculty and friends who are making an impact. Today I'm your host, roger Ream. Today I'm delighted to welcome Ari Fleischer, an esteemed communication and crisis management leader. Ari was the former White House press secretary under President George W Bush, serving as spokesman during the recount of the 2000 presidential election and the 9-11 terrorist attacks. After leaving the White House in 2003, ari continued to offer insight into the complexities of government and the media through his company Fleischer Communications. Ari is also a highly sought-after public speaker and a New York Times bestselling author. His latest book is Suppression, deception, snobbery and Bias, which was published in 2022.
Speaker 1:We're also excited that Ari will be the keynote speaker at our annual donor conference in Naples, florida, on March 6, 7, 8. Details for the conference are available at tfasorg. That's tfasorg, ari. Thank you so much for joining me today. You got it, roger. Glad to do this. Let's jump right into your experience in the White House in 2001. You weren't working for the president long before the 9-11 attacks took place. You were with the president that day, as I recall. Can you talk about what that was like?
Speaker 2:Yeah, we began the day a little bit up the road from here in Naples. I was in Sarasota, florida. The president had arrived there the night before September 10th because he was going to read to a group of elementary school students the next day as part of his focus on education. And as the motorcade pulled up to the Emma Booker Elementary School, I got a page it was one of those old-fashioned pagers and I got a message from somebody who worked for me back at the White House before smartphones, before communications technology like that that said an airplane's hit the World Trade Center and my first reaction was it had to be some type of accident. And then, as President Bush was in that school reading to the kids, I got a second page telling me a second plane hit the second World Trade Center tower and I knew at that moment that it had to be a terrorist attack on the United States.
Speaker 1:In the subsequent hours and even days. What was that like? You're getting breaking news and news from the White House and the government regularly and you had to then speak to the American people the president, to speak to the American people. How was that? You know, that was not only just stressful, but just really a tough task to handle.
Speaker 2:Well, starting immediately with that second page, literally about 30 seconds later, white House Chief of Staff Andy Card interrupted the president, walked into that school room and did something that I've never seen happen before at an event. He stopped. The president whispered in his ear. A second plane hit the second tower. America is under attack, and I watched all that unfold right before my eyes. It never even occurred to me to interrupt the president, and the president absorbed that information, thought about it for several minutes and then got up from his chair, walked into the classroom.
Speaker 2:The press started to shout questions and we of course didn't know anything. Yet the president was sitting at the school event. We got into what's called a holding room where there's secure classified phones. Everywhere the president goes any president. There's a room set aside, guarded by the Secret Service, with secure telephone communications inside it, just in case something goes wrong somewhere around the world. We never used it before that day. President Bush used it, so he starts getting updates from Condi Rice, the National Security Advisor, and everybody's now furiously working the phones, trying to get as much information as we can. So we wheeled the TV into that holding room, so now the president and the rest of the staff could see what the American people were seeing. Think about for all that time America is fixed on their TVs. None of us are watching it, because we're at this event at a schoolroom in Florida, and quickly it became apparent that we needed to leave, not finish any more of the event, get on Air Force One and head back to Washington. So in the motorcade en route to Air Force One, we got a report of the third plane hitting the Pentagon. And then we got on Air Force One and the plane took off like a rocket ship. I've never seen Air Force One take off the way it did, and that's because they had a report, which turned out to be false, that there was a sniper at the end of the runway. We take off and start heading back to what we thought would be Washington, and the Secret Service said to the president it's not safe to go to Washington. We don't know how many aircraft are in the sky. We don't know how many planes have been hijacked. The last thing we want to do is put Air Force One down at a known, predictable location like Andrews Air Force Base.
Speaker 2:Now, at that time too, once we boarded the plane, understand three planes were now down. First report we got was that six aircraft were in the sky, had not responded to the order that was given to all aircraft to immediately land, so we thought there were still six missiles up in the sky. Then we got a report that a fourth plane went down near Camp David. That was the first report about the plane that went down in Shanksville, pennsylvania, which, as the crow flies, isn't terribly far from Camp David, but it had nothing to do with Camp David. Yet that's the first information we got about that fourth aircraft.
Speaker 2:So a debate broke out on Air Force One do we return to Washington or not? And once the determination was made that you cannot go back to Washington, air Force One actually went up to 45,000 feet in the sky a very high altitude for a 747, and flew in a random zigzag pattern in the sky, which turns out to be an old Cold War practice. That in case there was ever a Soviet or a Chinese attack on the United States. Cold War doctrine said Air Force One goes up to a very high altitude so it has more time. Very few aliens can go that high, see anything that's coming and fly in a pattern that only the pilot of Air Force One knows where Air Force One is going, and that way there's no possibility, other than random luck, of somebody finding Air Force One in the sky. We did that, and then the decision was made to land at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana, which was actually in the middle of a live B-52 drill loading nuclear weapons. The nuclear weapons weren't live, but everything else they were doing was live, and so that base was already on the highest alert status possible and we made their alert go even higher because now all of a sudden they've got the President of the United States on their base and the President gathered more information at Barksdale and then still wanted to go back to Washington and still being told by the Secret Service and Vice President Cheney, who was in the bunker underneath the White House it's not safe, don't come here.
Speaker 2:The decision was then made to leave Barksdale and go to Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska, where they had very secure communications facilities so the president could convene a meeting with the National Security Council and others around the world, and we flew to Offutt, thinking we might have to spend the night there. The meeting ended and the president made the decision. He was just tired of being kept out of Washington and he said we're going back to Washington no matter what. At that point all the planes had landed. Generally they thought it would be safe to get back to Washington. There was a CAP Combat Air Patrol up in the skies above Washington. But just as we were leaving Offutt, a report came in that a plane was coming to the United States from Spain and had not returned to its point of origin. We thought there was another aircraft coming to the United States. That report turned out to be false as well. The plane actually did turn around the nation that night.
Speaker 2:And then I remember, after his speech, I went with him to the bunker underneath the White House. It's called the PEOC, the Presidential Emergency Operations Center. And Roger, what sticks out in my mind? I still remember it like it was yesterday. The Secret Service had their long guns out inside the PEOC, in the hallway immediately leading up to the PEOC, in the safest place, what you would think on earth, the most protected place on earth, the White House, the bunker underneath the White House. They were so unsure of what could be next, where the next threat was from. I've never seen that. Their long guns were out already. And that was the night of September 11th and then everything from that moment forward was all geared to two things First and foremost, helping the people of New York and then, second, protecting the country so it cannot possibly ever happen again. Because we were told by the CIA, it's not a question of if, it's a question of when the next attack will take place.
Speaker 1:Well, I appreciate that. I know it's probably not events you want to relive, but if you pull back from that day, I'm curious about you had an immediate lesson in crisis management over the next few months as well. I'd be interested if you have thoughts on that, as well as lessons that you took from President George W Bush's leadership through that crisis.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a great question. It's especially a great question for the young people who gather under your auspices and learn about leadership and learn about what the future can be. You never know when you're going to be tested and there are tests like September 11th affecting a commander-in-chief but in every field, in every walk of life, you're going to be tested. If you're a principal at a school and something goes wrong and you have to deal with students and teachers. If you're a union shop leader on the floor and there's a terrible accident on a factory floor, you have to deal with your workers. Same thing with the management of the factory. All walks of life, people will be tested.
Speaker 2:And what I learned on September 11th is calm. When something goes wrong, the calmest, coolest heads are the ones that prevail. The people who immediately get ignored or get written off the picture are the people who get emotional, who get hotheaded, who just crack under the stress. And there's stress in every way, shape and form, in every field in America. And the lesson I learned is, when something bad happens and I learned this about myself as I started to brief the press on September 12th and brief the country the worst things got, the calmer I became. I don't know how, I don't know why. I had not been tested like this before, but that was my personality, I suppose, and I think that helped me. And I learned that, going forward through everything, You've got to have just a steely approach, a level-headed approach, so you can calmly, wisely and deliberatively make right decisions under stress and under pressure.
Speaker 1:One other thing I want to ask you about from that time is the World Series. I think it was game three in New York, and, as I understand it, you're a Yankees fan too, so it must have been extra special for you. Could you recount that story?
Speaker 2:Well, that's right. That would have been, I think, november 1st, and I am a huge Yankees fan. Because I'm such a Yankee fan, I didn't go to the game. So when the president goes to a game like that, back in that era actually, the TV reception on Air Force One was spotty. We didn't have satellite TV back then, and so Air Force One could intermittently pick up signals from ground-based large antenna and so you could be flying, get the game, and then you get to the large pockets where you don't get the game there's no TV on Marine One. And so I knew President would get there prior to the game, go into the game and then leave in the third or fourth inning to get back to Washington. No TV on Marine One, intermittent TV on Air Force One. And then certainly from my drive from Andrews or the White House back to my house, I had no TV in the car. I was going to watch every pitch of that game. So I didn't go on purpose.
Speaker 2:But the next morning President Bush did something I'd never seen him do before. He walked into my office at about seven in the morning. Normally if you need to talk to the president you'd go to see him in the Oval, he doesn't come into your office. Seven in the morning he came into my office and he said to me no matter what happens to me in the course of my presidency, what happened last night at Yankee Stadium will be one of the most special things. Because when that crowd burst out into USA, usa, he knew how much that meant to America.
Speaker 2:After the suffering, after the tragedy, the loss of life, america was still feeling shaken. For that brief moment, that shining moment of cheer, he knew that the country was rallying, he knew we were one. You know there wasn't as if there was a Democrat chanting USA or a Republican or an Independent. It was. Everybody was chanting USA and it really was. It was just a thunder. Or an Independent, it was. Everybody was chanting USA and it really was. It was just a thunderstruck moment and he really appreciated it. He and I still talk about that moment. You know what? There's a big piece of me that wishes I had gone, just to have been in the infield, to have touched the turf of Yankee Stadium on that day, to have witnessed it in person. But the Yankees won the game. So I was glad I stayed home Don day. Who have witnessed it in person? But the Yankees won the game so I was glad I stayed home. Don't ask me about game seven.
Speaker 1:That was a much worse outcome. Let's fast forward now to 2025. We have a new president who's been in the office just barely over a month as we talk today, and he's made some changes in the press briefing room. I know and been very disruptive in terms of executive orders, but I know he's allowing a lot more people from outside the legacy media if you want to call it that bloggers and podcasters into the press briefing room. What are your thoughts about the transformation in terms of the press side of things with the Trump administration?
Speaker 2:It's about time that room is the last bastion of the 1980s. The White House press room is still overwhelmingly dominated by the mainstream media, the same way they existed in 81 when Ronald Reagan was president. And CBS, nbc. Abc had all the viewers because there was nowhere else to watch. New York Times, washington Post, associated Press reigned supreme because they were largely it. If it appeared on the front page of the New York Times, it must be true, and every other reporter in America chased it as if it was true. There was no conservative media back then. There was no independent media, there was no blogs, no social media, no alternatives. So you were a captive audience of the mainstream media. That is largely still what the White House briefing room is. The first rows of the White House briefing room are ABC, nbc, cbs, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Associated Press. Fox News is now in the first row, but it's largely unchanged. So I welcome the modernization of the White House briefing room to the way people get their news today. Back in the 80s some 60 to 80 million people got their news from ABC, cbs and NBC. Now those three evening 630 broadcasts have only 20 million viewers. So tens of millions have gone somewhere else and those somewhere else's deserve representation in that briefing room, and so I think it's a fantastic idea to let social media influencers responsible, serious social media influencers, into that room. I think it's a breath of fresh air to have podcasters in that room, and I also think it's about time that room had more conservative voices.
Speaker 2:I wrote a book about the press, and one of the things that I researched that came out two years ago was of the 49 seats in the room where the 49 most established reporters sit. I looked up their party identifications it's 12 to 1 Democrat to Republican. Tell me how the most important briefing room, the most important gathering spot for the media in America, should not look like America, think like America, talk like America? How can it be so out of whack with America that it's 12 to 1 Democrat to Republican? That's just not right. So I welcome these changes. And one last point, roger. I also want to point out President Trump, no matter who he's talking to, whether it's mainstream media or otherwise, is the most accessible president I've ever seen. You could even argue he's so accessible that it's going to hurt him because he's overexposing himself, but he takes questions a couple times a day from the mainstream media. They've never had this much access to the president of the United States.
Speaker 1:Well, harry, there's been a flurry of activity since he was inaugurated on January 20th. Lots of executive orders, even many more than in his first term. I think there have been more in the first month than the first year of President Trump's first term. Some of it is responding to things the Biden administration was doing. Clearly, we have serious problems in our country with spending, with overregulation, with the inability of Congress to tackle a lot of important issues. So I'm kind of conflicted. On the one hand, I feel like if the president doesn't enact executive orders to reverse some of these things, to get us back on on track, to hopefully prompt real economic growth, we're going to be in deeper trouble. On the other hand, I worry about the executive having too much power. What are your thoughts on this? And you know, can we expect Congress to take back some responsibility in the Constitution to legislate, rather than having the courts or the executive branch or the administrative state doing the legislating?
Speaker 2:I think that's just a great question, especially for the young people who are watching this. Your question follows a very long tradition of people watching the power balance between the legislature, the executive and the Supreme Court. It preceded the existence of our nation. It was one of the things Enlightenment thinkers had to deal with. It goes back to the British crown and how much authority the parliament would have vis-a-vis the crown, versus spending, versus appointments. All those issues are centuries old, so you're seeing a continuation of that.
Speaker 2:There's nothing new here with what Donald Trump is doing, other than Trump is doing it where most politicians shy away from it, or I should say he's trying to do it because we don't yet know what the final results will be. But I am a believer that the government is too big, spends too much, over-regulates and everybody just accepted it. We just kind of rolled our eyes and said there's nothing anybody can do about it. Well, along comes Donald Trump, an outsider, a businessman, and Elon Musk, an outsider, businessman, and says we have to do something about it. And only an outsider can even try to do it, because everybody in government eventually gets co-opted, because they become part of the system, because now they're making reductions that will affect people they know their constituents will come and say you can't do that, you're going to hurt somebody, or some very sympathetic soul will be on TV saying this hurts me and all of a sudden, now you're hurting people, so you can't do it. And most politicians back down. Well, these outsiders, trump and Musk, aren't backing down, and this is going to be an epic struggle to see whether or not the Leviathan can be tamed, whether or not the bureaucracy is on its own track that no one can slow down because it's self-perpetuating. Or is it indeed responsive to a unitary executive, a president of the United States who goes after this?
Speaker 2:Now Trump's hand will be strengthened immensely through legislation as Trump, through executive order, eliminates this program or that program or gets into an argument that the courts will indeed have to weigh in on, on whether the president has the authority to end, terminate certain federal programs. Statute will always enhance the president's power because now it's longer lasting. Now it can only be undone by statute, not by executive order. So I'm hopeful that Congress, which seems to be growing a spine about spending cuts, that Congress will back President Trump up and in the tax act and in the spending laws that they're dealing with now that they'll write much of what Trump has done into law.
Speaker 2:If not, will the executive orders be sufficient? That's going to get tested in court. Can the president under the unitary executive theory of the Constitution, does he indeed have the authority to run the executive branch? How much does he have strong? That's what's being tested and this nonsense that we're in a constitutional crisis. We are in an absolute typical tipping between the legislature and the executive, for who has what power over what issues, and it's going to be dealt with in the courts. It's going to be dealt with in Congress and we'll see how far the president pushes the envelope. But if you don't push that envelope, you get pushed over in Washington DC. So I welcome what Musk and Trump are doing. It's really, I think, our last and only chance to do something about the bureaucracy.
Speaker 1:The president certainly has every right to try to take control of the administrative state of the executive branch and a lot of his executive orders have been geared toward him trying to take control of the executive branch which he's responsible for. And I even think, as you were saying that, that some of the recent Roberts court decisions have been in a sense saying to Congress hey, congress, you've got prerogative here and you've got to do legislating, and hopefully they'll accept that responsibility. I want to also ask you you know we've seen I'm curious on Israel what relates to what we do at the Fund for American Studies was after the horrific October 7th attacks in 2023, what we saw on college campuses and mainly the response of the administrations at many of our elite universities was just such a disgusting lack of leadership by college administrations. There's probably going to be a shift maybe there has been already in the approach of the Trump administration versus the Biden administration toward Israel. I'd love to hear some of your thoughts on how we should approach those issues.
Speaker 2:This, again, is where your work is so important and so influential. It just baffles me that there can be at least it seems so many young people on campus who are willing to support Hamas and have organized events to boycott Israel after the Hamas butchery. Yet this is what so many on campuses had to endure, and I cannot imagine what it's like to be a conservative, to be Jewish, to walk on a campus in which these encampments took place and be expected to just accept it. You know the left is so used to saying to the right just accept our behavior, but anytime anybody in the right even if you remember in 2017, would wear a MAGA hat on campus, administrators would come down on that student for creating a threatening environment. Yet now you can have an encampment in support of Hamas, often with faculty members attending, with the blessings of the administration. So we need young voices. We need people with the courage to speak out. We need young people to rally to Israel, because when you rally to Israel, you're rallying to America. You're rallying on behalf of Western ideals. You're rallying on behalf of the very morality that shaped the Judeo-Christian ethic, which gave fruit to democracy and gave fruit to freedom and individual liberty. This is the essence of what Christianity, judaism and democracies is about and I think your students clearly understand that.
Speaker 2:But I welcome what the administration is doing now. They're cracked down on these college campuses, their message that you'll be deported if you're a foreign citizen under existing statute providing material support for terrorism, which is what Hamas is that you'll be deported. And it's also interesting to note last spring, when all the encampments were created and rose up and administrations, college administrations just sort of yielded and folded or accepted and welcomed. You don't see much of that anymore. It's even more rare now to see that on college campuses. I think even the leadership of universities got tired of it because they recognize how out of line it is for their schools to put up with that type of behavior. And I hope young conservatives just continue to step forward with pride and dignity and wave the American flag, wave the Israeli flag and stand for freedom.
Speaker 1:We've started a student journalism association and it has over 400 members. And then we've started several dozen independent campus newspapers, beginning before the October 7th attacks at Ivy League schools at some of the elite public universities, giving financial support to get these papers going, giving them training and in some cases Columbia, penn, nyu. I know these independent papers were breaking news because the mainstream college paper wasn't covering some of the things going on on campus, many of the encampment Some of our reporters on our network were getting on places like Fox News and other media. A couple of them wrote an op-ed for the New York Times reporting on what was happening on campus. And so I wonder, as we train these young people, what would you say to young people today? A college student who is interested in a career in journalism? Would you encourage it?
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and my message would be have no fear. We need other voices in the public square. For too long journalism has been defined by liberalism. There's a self-selection, interestingly, about most of the people who want to go into journalism and they see the job of a journalist is to speak truth to power, to protect the weak, and they usually define that by if you're successful in America, if you create jobs in America, there's something wrong with you. The only reason you were able to make money, be successful, create jobs, is you must have taken something away from somebody else as opposed to you built yourself up, you did what we're supposed to do in this country and we need other voices in the public square to represent frankly Adam Smith's invisible hand. You know the media doesn't cover it. Maybe it's invisible so they don't see it.
Speaker 2:But I think every conservative economic thinker realizes Adam Smith's invisible hand is the greatest way to alleviate poverty. It is the greatest way to move somebody from lower income to lower middle income or from lower middle to middle income and up the scale. We need conservative intellectual thinkers and writers to bring that case to the public and there will be a hunger for it, because you can't get that in the New York Times. You can't get that in the mainstream media, but I begin my day not only with the New York Times and the mainstream media, but I read the Federalist, the Washington Examiner, the Daily Wire, the Daily Signal from the Heritage Foundation. There's just so many good conservative outlets out there now. So there's a great future for people who are studying journalism to be able to be true to who they are, true to what they say, and be employed, and that's a sea change. That did not exist when I was White House press secretary, it exists now and it's a great path for young people.
Speaker 1:And we have many of our graduates working at those publications that you mentioned. I'm proud to say, and also mentioned, that we have a Joseph Rago fellowship at the Wall Street Journal and we started out selecting one young person coming out of college and we paid their salary to work for nine months on the editorial page and of our first six fellows, three have been hired there as permanent staff. One the first, elliot Kaufman, was just named to the editorial board and he's written a lot of their coverage of the Middle East, the attack on Israel, and we have two there now who I hope might get hired, and we've just decided to expand it to three fellows a year who will have working at the Wall Street Journal. And it's one who wasn't hired because they just didn't have a position at the time. Her fellowship ended, ended up now writing opinion at the Boston Globe as well, so it's a great program to get conservatives into the media where they can have influence.
Speaker 1:Ari, you'll be coming to Naples to our conference March 6th, 7th and 8th. We're looking forward to that. Could you just? You know I didn't ask you much about your business, but I know you're doing a lot of work in consulting, related to both sports and other types of clients. Could you say something about what's keeping you busy beside your appearances on television and your speaking around the country?
Speaker 2:I'm a Fox News contributor and so that's how I keep my foot in the water on politics. But I run a PR firm and half my clients are corporations, the other half are sports organizations. So the college football playoff selection committee is a client of mine. I attend all the meetings of the selection committee, give advice to the commissioners. I helped launch Live Golf, which was a whole lot of fun. I've worked for Major League Baseball. I've media trained some 12 NFL teams, so I do a lot of work in sports and I work for a lot of large American corporations on communications issues, how to handle the press, where I'll do training of people who are going to talk to the press Kind of what I did at the White House, just different issues.
Speaker 1:You don't have a vote on who plays in the college football playoff no vote, just communications advisor.
Speaker 2:If I had a vote, Middlebury would have gotten it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, thank you very much for joining me on the Liberty and Leadership podcast today, harry. I look forward to seeing you in Naples soon.
Speaker 2:Thanks so much. We'll see you Friday night.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to the Liberty and Leadership podcast. If you have a comment or question, please drop us an email at podcast at tfasorg, and be sure to subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast app and leave a five-star review. Liberty and Leadership is produced at Podville Media. I'm your host, roger Ream, and until next time, show courage in things, large and small.
