He Never Met the Man
by digby
Do you suppose that Governor Walker really talks the way he did with “David Koch” to every strange constituent he finds himself on the phone with? Because he says very clearly in this interview that he doesn’t know Koch —- indeed, had barely heard of him until he took his call in the middle of the biggest crisis of his life and chatted casually about everything from the GOP’s secret strategy to Mika Breszinski’s ass, even agreeing to go out to “Cali” and celebrate when the whole thing was over. Sure. That makes sense.
And then there’s this ongoing little issue over who suggested that he bring in some outside agitators, which he still fails to adequately explain. Here’s what he said to Greta Van Susteran, via Heather at C&L:
WALKER: No. I’ve never met the Koch brothers before so this is obviously why someone calling could prank me because I’ve never talked to him before. I know he’s an employer in the state and in the end, I mean, I think it’s interesting because the prankster there tried to insinuate at least that this person was going to push for people to come in and cause a disturbance amongst the protesters. I made it very clear, that’s not right. That doesn’t work. That has no value. VAN SUSTEREN: But you thought about it. When you brought up the part about doing dirty tricks with the crowd, you said well, at least you’re quoted as saying, you know well the only problem with that, because we thought about that, the problem that, my only gut reaction that is right now the lawmakers I’ve talked to have completely had it with them. The public isn’t really fond of this. WALKER: Right because in the end the protesters have not overwhelmed them. They’ve realized they’ve come in from other states. VAN SUSTEREN: But you thought about it. WALKER: Well yeah, we had people contact us, I had people, I even had lawmakers in other states suggesting riling things up. When I pointed out, increasingly and I’ve said this all over the media, I’ve said it in all my interviews, is that we’ve had a civil discourse amongst people here in the state of Wisconsin. My great fear was of people coming from other states. My biggest fear was last Saturday when you had protesters both for and against the bill coming in. I thought you were going to have some major collisions between the two and thank god, we didn’t have any disturbances. I think it’s because the people of the state are the ones thriving.
I guess that’s believable since he apparently blindly answers every call and blabs uncontrollably no matter who it is. Who knows how many people both in the state and outside it were suggesting that he get some outside agitators in to “rile things up”? It sounds like several. And in the phone call, it sounds like he considered it. I think maybe he ought to come clean and tell people who these dirty tricksters are. Certainly, if they are people who work for him, he needs to fire them immediately. That’s extremely unethical behavior. Richard Nixon was driven from office for doing things like that.
But seriously, folks. Are we supposed to believe that he doesn’t really even know who Koch is or how much he contributed to his campaign, but that he picked up the phone and had this extremely intimate strategic discussion with him? Really?
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