President Donald Trump will need to set a "stern tone of leadership" while investigations continue into who leaked nearly 9,000 CIA documents to WikiLeaks, former White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer said Thursday.
"The president has to set the stern tone of leadership that we will get to the bottom of it and we will," Fleischer, who served under former President George W. Bush, told Fox News' "Fox and Friends" program.
"You let the FBI and CIA do their job, which I have high confidence that they will."
There is nobody who "takes takes this more seriously and is alarmed more than our CIA officers and FBI agents," Fleischer continued. "They will get to the bottom of it. They have the technology to figure it out. You hope the people don't flee like Edward Snowden did and that they're brought to trial."
One would have thought the United States would have learned its lesson after Snowden, a former National Security Agency contractor who leaked thousands of damaging items, said Fleischer, and now it's happened twice.
Even though Trump has gotten a rocky start with the nation's intelligence agencies, Fleischer said he still thinks the president can smooth out the relationship because of the CIA hack.
"When the president sends that message that nothing is more important than preserving the secrecy of what our CIA officers are doing to protect our country, 99.9999 percent of the people in the CIA will support him on that," said Fleischer.
The former press secretary also spoke about the ongoing fight over Obamacare reform, saying the news media is reporting more about what is going wrong and who opposes the measure, rather than what is right.
"The fact of the matter is, the House passed a budget to move the bill, which is highly unusual and highly early," said Fleischer. "Ways and Means passed it last night. Hillarycare in 1993 didn't even get a vote in Ways and Means. Under Speaker Ryan they're moving forward. "
The bill will test Republicans over whether they are capable of being the governing party, instead of just an opposition party, said Fleischer.
"Many Republicans in the House have never been part of a majority party before with a Republican president," said Fleischer. "If we fail to legislate we will get our clocks cleaned in the 2018 midterm election. Republicans cannot be a party of opposition. They have to get party of getting things done."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
© 2024 Newsmax. All rights reserved.