Back in 2003, President Bush told a Fox News interviewer that he didn't read newspapers, kicking off a loud round of condemnation from...well, newspapers.
Since that interview, it's become obvious that Bush does indeed read newspapers, and that he always has. Just how an egomaniac like Bush could go without seeing for himself what people are writing about him is no longer debatable.
He reads newspapers, he soaks them up, every morning, over coffee with wife Laura.
But he's more likely to read the Washington Times than the New York Times.
From the New York Times :
..in 2003...he told Brit Hume on Fox News that he glanced at the headlines, but “I rarely read the stories,” because, he said, they mix opinion with fact. He said he preferred to get his news from “objective sources” — like “people on my staff who tell me what’s happening in the world.”
Last year...he softened his stand. “I see a lot of the news,” Mr. Bush told Mr. Williams. “I — every morning I look at the newspaper. I’m not — I can’t say I’ve read every single article in the newspaper, but I definitely know what’s in the news.”
In April, Mr. Bush reinforced the idea that he read the paper but at the same time suggested it had little influence on his thinking. In rejecting calls to fire Donald Rumsfeld, the secretary of defense, he said: “I hear the voices and I read the front page and I hear the speculation, but I’m the decider, and I decide what’s best.”
...his wife, Laura, said last week that she and her husband had read the morning papers for years.
“We’ve done the same thing since we first got married,” she told People magazine. “We wake up in the morning and drink coffee and read the newspapers.”
