James O’Keefe is the sleaziest conservative operator ever. His organization hired a woman to lie and pretend to have been in a sexual relationship with Roy Moore when she was 15 in a failed attempt to sting the Washington Post. They failed because the newspaper did what journalists are supposed to do: they checked her story out.
In the course of standard background research—with which O’Keefe and his organization are, apparently, unfamiliar—reporters discovered holes in Phillips’ story. The company she had named as her employer had no record of her, she had a cell phone number with an Alabama area code despite saying she had last lived there in 1992, and a GoFundMe page published in May under her name had asked friends for money so that she could move to New York “to work in the conservative media movement to combat the lies and deceipt [sic] of the liberal MSM.”
When confronted by Post reporter Stephanie McCrummen about the GoFundMe page and other inconsistencies in her story—an exchange that was recorded on video—Phillips stated that she had previously attempted to work for conservative website The Daily Caller and that she was not working for any conservative organizations with the intent of sabotaging the paper. Phillips, who then left the meeting, was spotted entering the Westchester offices of Project Veritas on Monday, where O’Keefe refused to say whether she was employed at the non-profit, which purports to “investigate and expose corruption, dishonesty, self-dealing, waste, fraud and other misconduct.”
It purports to investigate those things using “corruption, dishonesty, self-dealing, waste, fraud and other misconduct”. All delivered with maximum incompetence, which O’Keefe has demonstrated in every one of his little projects. Everyone associated with him has emerged covered in slime, but the Republicans keep supporting him. Even Donald Trump donated to “Veritas”, but then, he’s a bumbling slime monster himself.
By the way, I should mention that O’Keefe also dragged down a University of Minnesota Morris alumnus, Joe Basel, who I bumped into a few times, and who was involved with O’Keefe’s break-in to Mary Landrieu’s office.
Another was Mr. Basel, 24, the co-founder of a conservative publication at the University of Minnesota, Morris, that features headlines like “Third World Countries Need Sweatshops” and “I Hate Che Guevara T-Shirts.”
Our conservative alternative paper has long been a source of embarrassment here.
But the most despicable thing about this latest example is that it was an attempt to smear the women who have stepped forward to honestly accuse Roy Moore — it’s a blatant effort to silence and harm victims of sexual abuse. For shame.
There is no shame if you’re a Republican, though. For his repulsive bungling, O’Keefe gets paid $317,000 per year.
Joe Basel has gone on to be a conservative political consultant in Texas, and is running an organization called the American Phoenix Foundation, which includes an “Investigative Journalism program” and a “Journalism Training program”. There are never any prices to be paid for being a bumbling conservative criminal and professional douchebag.
Look at O’Keefe stonewalling when asked a few questions about his attempted hoax.
I’m sure O’Keefe and his ilk don’t even see the problem. They are so absolutely convinced that the “liberal” media are lying, they are allowed anything to prove it. Even by not actually proving it.
I haven’t seen this much projection since I was in eighth grade and ‘worked’ on the schools AV team.
The scary part is, they probably really think that this is the way ALL news organizations operate.
The good part is these bozos are too incompetent to be on Trump’s press team.
The really scary part is just how many Americans eat this shit up and believe.
Has anyone noticed that it’s always the rabid conservatives who are constantly accusing others of false flag operations, but they’re also the ones who keep getting caught creating them?
Now that’s a challenge. Nixon? Kissinger? Agnew? Reagan? North? Poindexter? Chaney?
If you drop the ideological label “conservative” you get closer to what I think is the reality. Guys like O’Keefe, Trump et al are sleazy operators who adopted the “conservative” ideological identity because it sells to the rubes these days.
I think they adopted the conservative ideological identity because they are sleazy. I mean, that is the only reasonable explanation why someone would become conservative in the first place,
@3 HappyHead
Ya that seems to be the pattern…
He’s an asshole and all, and his attempts are laughably easy to uncover, but I must admit some glee at the possibility of seeing media outlets getting suckered. If they can’t filter out Sokal-level nonsense, how can we trust them? If anything, this guy is vaccinating us with a weaker form of the disease.
Rob Bos wrote:
The actual effect seems to be quite the opposite. They know damn well that if you slime someone often enough, eventually public perception will start to associate the person with the slime you keep throwing at them. Let’s not also forget that this asshole got ACORN shut down over a similar hoax, and PP suffers constant defunding attacks over a similar one.
The adage that whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger isn’t always true. Oftentimes it merely makes you more vulnerable.
Yeah, that’s a good point, and I admit I’m chronically trying to see the upside in things. There’s also the problem where this creates moral equivalencies – there’s a whole range of media outlets varying dramatically in quality. This kind of thing is tailored to throw as much smoke as possible, so that unwary bystanders will assume that there’s fire. It’s what they did to Clinton – if you pump out as many accusations as possible, even if they’re completely ridiculous, some people will assume that there’s an underlying reason for it. It’s the Gish Gallop – it takes so much more effort to debunk than to accuse.
I agree. How many people are going to come away from this story only with the impression “accusation of harassment turned out to be false”?
The smoke throwing also obscures the legit reports which are rarer and usually in the other direction.
It seems to be an axiom that if you have the word “truth” in some form in your name or nym, (e.g. Pravda, Russian for truth), you are probably lying.