A Quote by Dana Bash

I covered the White House during the Bush years when Ari Fleischer, Scott McClellan and Dana Perino were at the podium. We thought those were, at times, crazy press briefings, asking questions about major events like the Iraq War and the leaking of Valerie Plame's name and the outing of her as a CIA operative.

Dana Bash

Quote Topics

War About Asking Asking Questions Bush CIA Covered Crazy Events Her House Iraq Iraq War Leaking Like Major Mcclellan Name Outing Podium Press Questions Scott Those Thought Times Were White White House Years

Quote Author

Dana Bash
American - Journalist
Born: June 15, 1971

According to Washington insiders, White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan could be the next official to leave the Bush administration. McClellan says he'd like to spend more time lying for his family

Amy Poehler

All my stories were usually titled, 'White House Says,' 'President Bush Wants,' and I relied on transcripts from the briefings. I relied on press releases that were sent to the press for the purpose of accurately portraying what the White House believed or wanted.

Jeff Gannon

The mainstream press was not aggressive enough after 9/11, was not aggressive enough in asking questions about a decision to go to war in Iraq, was not aggresive enough in asking the hard questions about the War on Terror. I accept that for the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times.

Dean Baquet

What I hear about the book does not sound like the Scott McClellan I knew for two years. I can say, without fear of contradiction, that I knew Scott better than any other White House correspondent or Washington reporter.

Jeff Gannon

Similarly, the press never tested many of the assumptions about WMDs. One of the great myths about the WMD issue is that everybody believed Iraq had them. Well, that's not true. There were a number of people in the intelligence community and the State Department who were skeptical, and many analysts in the Department of Energy were dubious about Iraq's nuclear capability. There were also people like Scott Ritter who were saying quite accurately what was going on.

Seymour Hersh

Because Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama failed to provide a status of forces agreement and leave sufficient troops in there, we are back at war. The president just ordered more troops on the ground. We are back at war in Iraq. And Scott Zubowski, whose mom would always come to Memorial Day events in Newcastle, Indiana, to see me, and I'd give her a hug and tell her we're never going to forget her son and we never will, Scott Zubowski and the sacrifices the American soldier made were squandered in Iraq because this administration created a vacuum in which ISIS was able to grow.

Mike Pence

When George W.Bush attacked Afghanistan, it was widely hailed, and the failure of our war there wasn't understood. Within a few months of attacking Afghanistan, Bush clearly moved on to get ready for Iraq, long before Osama bin Laden or Al Qaeda were dispensed with. There was never any serious debate in the press about whether even the notion that every Taliban was our enemy was valid. A lot of assumptions about that war were never challenged.

Seymour Hersh

There are many instances in which those at the uppermost levels of the White House were feeling the President [Barack Obama] was not fully informed of the flow of events and, in some cases, where policies were going in the White House.

Ron Suskind

For some in my generation, Sept. 11th was a moment of political awakening. For others, the Iraq War or the financial crisis or the rise of Obama were the major events of their teenage years that began to lay the foundation for their views.

Kristen Soltis Anderson

Inside the White House there were always extreme amounts of doubt about whether they should be escalating in Afghanistan. In fact, most of the president's advisers said, "This is probably not going to work." A lot of people in the military said, "This is probably not going to work." If the thumbnail version of the Iraq war was that George W.Bush lied about mass destruction weapons, the thumbnail version of Barack Obama's war in Afghanistan is that the generals pushed him into a war he didn't want to fight.

Michael Hastings

Presidents routinely testify in criminal cases. You know, George W. Bush did it with Valerie Plame. Bill Clinton did it three times with Ken Starr. Gerald Ford did it with respect to a testimony about a Charles Manson follower. And Ronald Reagan, I think, is perhaps the most important precedent.

Neal Katyal

President Bush said this Iraq situation looks like 'the rerun of a bad movie.' Well sure, there's a Bush in the White House, the economy's going to hell, we're going to war over oil. I've seen this movie, haven't I?

Jay Leno

That is the White House, where you can fit four times the amount of people in the press conference, allowing more press, more coverage from all over the country to have those press conferences. That's what we're talking about.

Reince Priebus

As a Republican, I have listened to Democrats talk about the only two times we won the White House in like 200 years that we stole both elections. I had to sit through Fahrenheit 9/11 and a lady was sobbing violently behind me about the election being stolen by George Bush and I patted her half way through and said, 'it's alright, it's alright. It's all a lie anyway.' Democrats have been whining for 16 years, they're still writing articles about how Bush stole the election in 2004 and 2000.

Joe Scarborough

The Trump White House has employed several different strategies for sidestepping uncomfortable questions. There has been a rightward tilt at press conferences and briefings. At Q&A sessions with foreign heads of state, Trump has bypassed the country's biggest newsrooms and called on reporters from conservative outlets instead.