Writing for her magazine, Olivia Nuzzi imagines my publication as part of a conservative cabal conspiring to dictate the hiring and firing of White House personnel. Nuzzi has been led to believe my colleagues are all mercenary journalists secretly recruited to ensure Mercedes Schlapp succeeds Hope Hicks.
Not to stunt her creativity, but as far as I can tell, my colleagues aren’t part of a coordinated shadow campaign to determine who becomes the next White House communications director with insidious reporting and strategically published color commentary.
To discover the obvious, Nuzzi could have done a quick Google search. Or perhaps she could have engaged in some light breaking-and-entering into our offices as that young reporter is wont to do.
She points to a lighthearted piece about Schlapp by Tom Rogan as an official endorsement. She dismisses a news report about Schlapp’s competition for the top comms position as “a hit job.” And she insinuates that our owner, Philip Anschutz, is in cahoots with Matt Schlapp, the organizer of the Conservative Political Action Conference, to make sure his wife hurries to the top of the White House ladder.
It is true that Rogan wrote a piece endorsing Schlapp. But that piece, which Nuzzi calls a “column,” was in truth a short blog post and, as my colleague rather blithely wrote at the time, his recommendation was based mostly off of brief run-ins with Schlapp in the Fox green room.
(Rogan normally sits just 10 feet from me. Since Nuzzi’s exposé, however, he’s been conspicuously absent and hasn’t responded to any of my questions about his alleged Illuminati overlords.)
It is also true that two of our White House reporters covered the tensions about the search for a new White House communications director. Hardly a “hit piece,” it is detailed and well-reported. Those two journalists seldom visit us on the commentary side of the newsroom, but from reading their work, it is clear they are thorough and fair — a fair substitute, I think, for the robust imagination Nuzzi clearly possesses.
It is finally true that our owner donates to CPAC and that our journalists occasionally speak at that confab. We never thought to hide that fact, and we never let it color our coverage. Our paper has been more than critical of that conference. We criticized them from allowing a lobbyist-sponsor on stage, mocked them for their lavish spending, and warned them in an editorial that they were risking abandoning the conscience of a conservative. This would be an odd strategy if our owner was working side-by-side with Schlapp.
I hate to do this, but I must regretfully inform Nuzzi we aren’t the shrewd operators she had hoped. But because she enjoys speculation, here is some of my own conjecture: I bet that after writing that gushing profile of Hicks earlier this month, Nuzzi called up that departing White House staffer/newest best friend to do some dumping on her old colleagues.
Of course, and just like Ms. Nuzzi, I have no way of knowing if my speculation is true.
