Former President George W. Bush Levels Tacit Criticism at Trump

http://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/27/us/politics/george-w-bush-criticism-trump.html

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WASHINGTON — Former President George W. Bush implicitly criticized President Trump on Monday, taking issue with his approach to immigration and the news media, and suggested that any ties between the new president’s team and Russia should be investigated.

In a television interview to promote a new book of his paintings, Mr. Bush indicated that important questions were raised by reported contacts between Russian officials and Mr. Trump’s associates during last year’s election campaign. Mr. Trump forced out his national security adviser for withholding information about a call with Russia’s ambassador.

“I think we all need answers,” Mr. Bush said on the “Today” show on NBC. He said he would defer to Senator Richard M. Burr, Republican of North Carolina and chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, about how such an investigation should be conducted. He is a “really good guy, and an independent thinker,” Mr. Bush said of Mr. Burr, “and if he were to recommend a special prosecutor, then it would have a lot more credibility with me.”

Like other members of his family, Mr. Bush did not support Mr. Trump during last year’s campaign against Hillary Clinton, although in public he largely kept his views to himself. Mr. Bush congratulated Mr. Trump after his victory and attended the inauguration last month, but the interview on Monday made clear that the most recent Republican president still had serious disagreements with his party’s incumbent commander in chief.

Although he did not mention Mr. Trump by name, Mr. Bush expressed disapproval of the president’s assertion that “fake news media” organizations are the “enemy of the American people.”

“I consider the media to be indispensable to democracy,” Mr. Bush told Matt Lauer, the “Today” host. “We need the media to hold people like me to account. I mean, power can be very addictive and it can be corrosive and it’s important for the media to call to account people who abuse their power, whether it be here or elsewhere.”

He seemed to suggest that language like Mr. Trump’s made it more difficult to press authoritarian leaders like President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to tolerate a free press. “It’s kind of hard to, you know, tell others to have an independent free press when we’re not willing to have one ourselves,” he said.

Mr. Bush also urged tolerance when asked about Mr. Trump’s efforts to temporarily ban travelers from seven predominantly Muslim countries. As president, Mr. Bush made a point of visiting a mosque after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and regularly insisted that the United States was not at war with Islam.

“It’s very important for all of us to recognize one of our great strengths is for people to worship the way they want to or not worship at all,” Mr. Bush said. “I mean the bedrock of our freedom — a bedrock of our freedom is the right to worship freely.”

Asked if he supported a ban on Muslim visitors to the United States, the former president said, “I am for an immigration policy that’s welcoming and upholds the law.”

But Mr. Bush, who has emphasized the importance of not criticizing a successor, tried to avoid seeming too critical of Mr. Trump. “Well, first of all, there’s only been one month in office,” he said. “Secondly, I think you have to take the man for his word that he wants to unify the country, and we’ll see whether he’s able to do so.”

Mr. Bush agreed to give interviews to publicize his book, “Portraits of Courage: A Commander in Chief’s Tribute to America’s Warriors,” published by Crown Publishing. The book, his third since leaving office, is a collection of 66 portraits of military veterans he has gotten to know personally. It also includes a four-panel mural he painted of several active and former members of the military. The paintings will be displayed at his presidential center in Dallas from March to October.

Mr. Bush picked up painting after leaving office when the historian John Lewis Gaddis mentioned that it was a hobby of Winston Churchill’s. The former president’s initial efforts focused on his pets as subjects. Then he painted a series of portraits of world leaders he met while in office, including Mr. Putin, and displayed them at his center.

Mr. Bush, who as commander in chief ordered American forces into Afghanistan and Iraq, hosts regular bicycle rides and golf tournaments with wounded veterans and decided to make them his next focus. He started painting them in September 2015. Some of the portraits in the book show veterans with prosthetic limbs. A few depict amputees playing golf.

“I painted these men and women as a way to honor their service to the country and to show my respect for their sacrifice and courage,” he wrote in the book. “I hope to draw attention to the challenges some face when they come home and transition to civilian life — and the need for our country to better address them.”