Saturday, October 07, 2006
Expose the Spin on the Foley Damage Control Actions
A key talking point: when ABC made Foley’s sexually explicit communications public, Hastert “dealt with it immediately” by going to Foley and telling him, “Resign or be expelled.” Both Ken Mehlman and Ed Gillespie said Hastert’s bold ultimatum to Foley was something not seen “in thirty years in this town.”
In fact, their entire story is a fabrication. Hastert could not have issued an ultimatum to Foley after the sexually explicit instant messages were made public, because by that time, Foley had already resigned. ABC did not make Foley’s sexually explicit communications public until Friday, September 29, at 6pm ET. Foley had already resigned three hours earlier, at around 3pm ET.
As ABC producer Maddy Sauer has described, Foley decided to resign not after an ultimatum from Speaker Hastert, but after ABC called his office on Friday morning and read Foley staffers the instant messages they had obtained. According to Sauer, Foley’s office called ABC an hour later and said the congressman would be resigning.
Speaker Hastert himself acknowledged that he had no role in Foley’s resignation in his first statement on the issue on Monday:
When [the instant messages] were released, Congressman Foley resigned. And I’m glad he did. If he had not, I would have demanded his expusion from the House of Representatives.
I am still waiting for Hastert to make a big teary-eyed speech where he is going to look the camera straight in the eye and say, "The truth is I am a FAT American. I was never even given the chance to hide in the closet because they don't make closets big enough that I can hide in anymore."
Pearls around the blogosphere:
Well, well. It looks as if Congressman Foley (R-Neverland)
“Resign or be expelled” has not happened in __30__ years? Cozy club up there.
Gay activist and blogger Michael Petrelis of San Francisco called on HRC to demand that Foley return the $27,000 that HRC has contributed to Foley’s congressional election campaigns between 2000 and 2006.
“It’s an interesting idea,” said HRC spokesperson Luis Vizcaino. “We’ll consider it.”
[Consider it?? LOL what a lying slime. They are going to double the amount every time he sends another page an email.]
