I’m sure you have all heard by now
* NY Times staffers report that McCarthy wanted Trump to resign, and other details embarrassing to McCarthy
* McCarthy denies everything
* Reporters pull a Hedley LaMarr (“Oh, sorry, I just remembered. I AM armed.”). Specifically: Oh, sorry, we forgot to mention. It’s all on tape.
About four years ago I mentioned that the smartest person dealing with Donald Trump was Omarosa. She had dealt with him numerous times in the past as part of his reality show, so she knew that he would simply lie about everything. She therefore taped every single conversation with him. Best of all, she didn’t immediately reveal that she had the tapes. She wrote or told interviewers about all the evil shit Trump had said, like a cagey lioness, hiding in the tall grass, setting her trap for an unsuspecting antelope, just waiting for Trump to deny everything. He was easy prey, the antelope predictably heading to the watering hole at sundown, insulting her and lying about everything right on cue, whereupon Omarosa went full Hedley LaMarr and said, “Oh, sorry, I AM armed – with tapes.” After a couple of lame attempts to have his spin doctors handle the situation, Trump finally let it go, a rare thing to see. He obviously didn’t want any more of her tapes becoming public.
These two NY Times guys have just sprung the same trap on McCarthy. They let him lie his ass off, deny everything, and rant about the liberal media, before they revealed that they had it all recorded.
That was a great move, but the best news of all for us political junkies is that the reporters assert that this tape is just a drop in their immense bucket of recorded material! This means that politicians really can’t deny anything they have written in their new book. While they may not have tapes to support every single claim in their book, they may have just that. That means that any denial of their story is a major gamble because it could make things much worse if there is tape to back the story. The politicians will have two choices – either admit they are guilty as charged, or risk a denial that might be refuted on tape – thereby proving them both guilty and dishonest, while simultaneously prolonging the life of a negative story in the media cycle.
(Their trap is also a helluva marketing scheme. That book is already #1 on the best seller charts, and it hasn’t been released yet.)
All of this raises a fascinating question. Who made these tapes? Liz Cheney was on the one they have already released, but she swears that she is not the culprit. So where did these tapes come from?