"I Punk’d Scott Walker" (Politico feature)

[alp227]

Remember when Ian Murphy of the Buffalo Beast pretended to be a Koch brother and ended up with an AWESOME undercover phone call to Wisconsin governor Scott Walker? Murphy tells his tale in a Politico.com feature:

I never thought Scott Walker’s people would be dumb enough to put me through. It was February 2011—the height of the Wisconsin governor’s battle with the public unions, with thousands of protesters filling the streets of downtown Madison—when I called his office posing as Tea Party sugar daddy David Koch.

I told Keith Gilkes, who was then Walker’s chief of staff, that the governor couldn’t return my call because “my goddamn maid, Maria, put my phone in the washer. I’d have her deported, but she works for next to nothing.” (In reality, I was calling with a free Skype number and couldn’t receive calls from a land line at the time.)

In my business, that’s called tipping your hand. All ethical liars do it. It’s the ridiculous, implausible hints that separate the ethical prankster from the confidence man, the satirist from the unrepentant political hack. But they didn’t get the joke, and soon Walker and I were comparing notes on how he could break the backs of those pro-union demonstrators.

On Tuesday, Walker unleashes an epic gag of his own, the book Unintimidated: A Governor’s Story and a Nation’s Challenge. Aimed at duping future historians and contemporary wonks, the 255 pages of political PR—co-authored by former Dubya speechwriter Marc Thiessen—read at times more like Stalin than Sacha Baron Cohen, given their sheer propaganda quotient. But some passages are pretty funny, like the chapter where he says my prank call—which I recorded and posted on YouTube, much to the governor’s dismay and embarrassment at the time—was all part of God’s plan to teach him humility.

I expected Gilkes to question why Koch would personally call the number on their website, suffering through busy signals and endless ringing like a common plebe, and then cavalierly trashing his undocumented maid. “I’m calling from the VOID—with the VOID, or whatever it’s called,” I said, thinking I’d strained credulity too far. “You know, the Snype!” But Gilkes just laughed and told me to call back at 2.

At the appointed hour, Walker and I enjoyed a friendly chat during which I suggested that he physically intimidate his Democratic opposition with a baseball bat, whip up a good counter-protest by dressing hobos in suits and most disturbing: that he ought to plant troublemakers to discredit the pro-union demonstrators.

“(W)e thought about that,” Walker replied, and eventually added, “My only fear would be if there’s a ruckus caused is that would scare the public into thinking maybe the governor has to settle to avoid all these problems.” So it wasn’t morality, but a cynical calculation, that saved the public from that particular ruse.

Cenk Uygur also had segments about the prank call, this one on his online Young Turks show:

And on MSNBC:

[Scuba]

1. Ian even showed up personally to assist with the Walker recall signature collection ...

[malaise]

2. This was one of the best pranks in memory

I'll never forget it