Will the media ask Bush who is telling the truth about his Syria conversation with Pelosi?

Written by Simon Maloy

Published

On April 20, The Washington Post reported that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said President Bush, at an April 18 White House meeting, “told her he did not criticize her recent trip to Syria.” According to the Post, Pelosi said Bush “told her in an unsolicited comment that it was actually the State Department that criticized her” for heading a bipartisan delegation to Syria and meeting with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The Post also reported, however, that deputy White House press secretary Dana Perino “took issue with Pelosi's account of the conversation in the Cabinet Room,” claiming “that Pelosi started the conversation about the Syria trip and that she never heard Bush back off his criticism.”

David Rogers posted an entry on The Wall Street Journal's Washington Wire weblog reporting that in response to Pelosi's assertion that Bush denied having criticized her trip, White House spokesman Tony Fratto referred to Bush's comments at an April 3 Rose Garden press conference criticizing congressional delegations to Syria.

Given Perino's and Fratto's suggestions that Pelosi is not telling the truth about the conversation, and given Pelosi's spokesperson's reported claim that the conversation occurred “as an aside,” Bush is presumably the only person besides the speaker who knows whether he denied having criticized her trip. As Media Matters for America documented, Pelosi came under harsh criticism by Republicans in the administration and in Congress -- criticism that was in many cases uncritically reported or echoed by the media -- for her trip to Syria and meeting with Assad. The situation gives rise to several questions that the media might pose to Bush:

  • Did you tell the speaker that you did not criticize her trip to Syria?
  • If not, why do you think she reported afterwards that you did tell her that?
  • If so, have you informed your spokespeople that they are mistaken? Also, if you were not critical of her trip, why did you allow other members of your administration to denounce her?

Indeed, as Media Matters for America noted, on several occasions, Perino directly criticized Pelosi for her trip to Syria and her April 4 meeting with Assad, but offered no specific criticism of the Republican member of Pelosi's delegation or the other Republican members of Congress who also met with Assad in the days preceding and following Pelosi's meeting. On March 30, Perino called Pelosi's trip “a really bad idea,” and on April 2 she said the trip would “alleviate[] the pressure that we are trying to put on [Syria] to change their behavior.” On the April 5 broadcast of The Rush Limbaugh Show, Vice President Dick Cheney attacked Pelosi's trip as “bad behavior.” During an April 4 interview with ABC News Radio, Cheney said of Pelosi's trip: “It means without [Assad] having done any of those things he should do in order to be acceptable, if you will, from an international standpoint, he gets a visit from a high-ranking American anyway. In other words, his bad behavior is being rewarded, in a sense.”

Responding to a question about Pelosi's trip at the April 3 press conference, Bush said the White House has “made it clear to high-ranking officials, whether they be Republicans or Democrats, that going to Syria sends mixed signals -- signals in the region and, of course, mixed signals to President Assad,” though he did not mention any specific “high-ranking officials.”