Ari Fleischer

Lawrence Ari Fleischer (born October 13, 1960) is an American media consultant and political aide who served as the 23rd White House Press Secretary, for President George W. Bush, from January 2001 to July 2003. As press secretary in the Bush administration, Fleischer was a prominent advocate for the invasion of Iraq. Since leaving the White House, he has worked as a media consultant and commentator. He joined Fox News as a contributor in July 2017. Early life Fleischer was born in 1960 in New York City, the son of Martha and Alan A. Fleischer. His mother was a database coordinator and his father was owner of an executive recruiting company. His parents were Jewish; his mother is a Hungarian immigrant who lost much of her family in the Holocaust. Both parents were Democrats who were "horrified" when Fleischer became a Republican, he told an interviewer in 2003: "While I lived at home and when I started college, I was a liberal Democrat. In a sense, it was President Carter who drove me out of the Democratic Party and it was President Reagan who welcomed me into the Republican Party." He graduated from Fox Lane High School in Bedford, New York, in 1978, and graduated from Middlebury College in Vermont in 1982. Congressional staffer Upon his graduation from Middlebury, Fleischer worked as press secretary for Jon S. Fossel, a Republican candidate for a New York congressional seat. Later Fleischer worked as press secretary for Norman Lent. From 1985 to 1988, he was field director for the National Republican Congressional Committee. He went back to being a press secretary in 1988, working for congressman Joseph DioGuardi.