Caller Posing As David Koch Dupes Scott Walker
Big story of the morning: a blogger for the Buffalo Beast got through on a phone call to Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, pretending to be far right wing billionaire David Koch, and talked to Walker for about 20 minutes — when Walker is rejecting all calls from Democrats. It’s a fascinating read, and here’s one of the most damning exchanges:
“David Koch”: We’ll back you any way we can. What we were thinking about the crowd was, uh, was planting some troublemakers.
Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker: You know, well, the only problem with that—because we thought about that…
Walker also compared himself to Ronald Reagan, making it clear that his intention is to destroy the unions, not to negotiate.
This is going to hurt Walker; he’s already trying to spin the conversation:
“The governor takes many calls everyday,” Walker’s spokesman, Cullen Werwie, said in a statement. “Throughout this call the governor maintained his appreciation for and commitment to civil discourse. He continued to say that the budget repair bill is about the budget. The phone call shows that the governor says the same thing in private as he does in public and the lengths that others will go to disrupt the civil debate Wisconsin is having.”
Actually, it shows much more than that.
Upon learning of the call, Democrats blasted the governor. “Scott Walker won’t listen to Senate Democrats, or the hundreds of thousands of average Wisconsinites who are speaking up against his divisive power grab. But an oil billionaire from Kansas gets his full attention,” Democratic Party of Wisconsin Chairman Mike Tate said. “It is a damning, embarrassing and possibly illegal admission that Scott Walker has put Wisconsin up for sale.”
State Assembly Minority Leader Peter Barca (D-Kenosha) read excerpts of the recording and said, “My first reaction, it’s revealing of his true agenda and his character.”
He added that Walker “talks about crushing the unions like Ronald Reagan. If that’s true, his intention isn’t to solve the problem it’s to make a name for himself.”
Barca said he was trying to arrange for the full Democratic caucus to listen to the recording.