Kochs respond, the story is advanced, my appearances on CNN and MSNBC, and even a response from the White House...of a sort...

Brad Friedman Byon 9/6/2011, 11:07pm PT

A few quick follow-up items, for now, in advance of tomorrow morning's Part 2, from Part 1 of my exclusive secret Koch tapes scoop at Mother Jones this morning which went very viral, very quickly today, as I figured it probably would.

• As I noted in UPDATE to my short stub story this morning linking over to the MoJo article, the Kochs finally decided to respond today, first to Jake Tapper at ABC News, after days of their refusing to give me a response --- even though I pressed them, multiple times in advance, for an explanation of Charles Koch's seeming comparison of "Saddam Hussein" to Barack Obama and the 2012 election as the "Mother of All Wars." See their response, and my response to it, in that UPDATE.

• CNN's Brian Todd did a decent report on the Situation Room today, in which I offer a quick comment...





• After years of appearing on Fox "News" and CNN, it was nice to finally be invited today to appear on MSNBC for the first time. Here's my appearance this evening on The Ed Show...





And just a few more quick points for now...

• There was some fairly decent coverage out there today. A lot of it in any case. A few even advancing the story a bit. Think Progress' Lee Fang (who has done yeoman's work on the Kochs for many months) combed through the so far much-overlooked transcript excerpts from the Kochs' closing night address by Fox "News'" Judge Andrew Napolitano. Those ran with the story this morning as well. Fang covered some of the stuff we didn't have space for in the initial MoJo report, including an admission from Koch exec Kevin Gentry (the emcee at the Koch seminar's dinner events) acknowledging that the Kochs' Tea Party astroturf group Americans for Prosperity, contrary to the way they're frequently covered in the corporate media, was "designed" to elect Republicans in 2010.

• And for some of the predictably lame coverage, the rightwing Weekly Standard's John Mccormack doesn't disappoint. He has an amusing "take" (or, more accurately, an attempt to cover for Charles Koch's reference to "Saddam Hussein" in allusion to the 2012 election against President Obama). His charge: We've edited out a word from the audio! Yes, he actually suggests "the word 'said' may have been deliberately edited out of the audio recording." Or something. Mr. Mccormack, we expose fraudsters and hoaxters like James O'Keefe who would purposely deceive the public towards a partisan political goal. We don't copy them. But nice try. And it does say something about the way you folks think over there.

• Lastly, for now. ABC's White House Correspondent Tapper noted in his report today that neither "the White House, nor the Obama 2012 campaign, nor Democratic National Committee had any immediate comment Tuesday when contacted by ABC News and asked about comments made by Koch referring to the 2012 campaign as a repeat of the Iraq War." Well, it looks like it didn't take long for the Obama 2012 campaign to turn Part 1 of our story, and the Kochs' attack on them, into a money maker. (By the way, it might have been nice, and certainly would have been appropriate to, at the very least, offer credit to Mother Jones in their email fundraising appeal!)...

Buckle up for Part 2 in the morning!



