July 5, 2015 By Lady Forward

Wisconsin governor Scott Walker showed off his “word salad” skills in front of reporters on Saturday at a Wauwatosa Independence Day parade. Walker was asked directly, in an on-camera interview shot by Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter Mary Spicuzza, about his involvement in the proposal to make changes to the state’s open records law. Rather than answer the simple “yes or no” questions, Walker rambled about a future meeting with legislative leaders where they would discuss “what we’re gonna do going forward,” and, when asked point blank if he had been aware of the changes ahead of time and if he had objected to them he responded, “There’s all sorts of ideas that float around the Capitol before the end of the Joint Finance Committee process,” (speaking as if the Joint Finance Committee process hadn’t ended last week with a party-line vote to pass the Budget on to the full Legislature).

Walker proves you don’t need a college degree to be well-schooled in the art of obfuscation. However, through his lack of denial about being involved in the attack on open records, the only plausible conclusion one can draw is that he knew, and was perhaps the instigator of the changes, and that documents showing this exist.

The interview transcript:

Reporter: “The Legislative privilege open records thing, did your office have input in that? Is that something you’re a part of?”

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Walker: “Well, as I mentioned yesterday, we’re gonna sit down and talk with the legislative leaders about that. We actually had already planned a meeting, a follow-up meeting the other day in terms of the arena where we had all four legislative leaders, but I think it’s pretty clear they need to make some changes in that and we’re gonna work with them on Monday.”

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Reporter: “Will you veto it if they don’t make changes?”

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Walker: “Uh… certainly it will all depend… we haven’t made commitments on any other vetoes, but those are things that obviously a lotta concerns about. My hope is, after talking with them on Monday, we get to a point where it’s either out completely or there’s significant changes to it.”

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Reporter: “Who was behind it? Do you know?”

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Walker: “Again, there’s a, as you know, at the end of the legislative process, a lot of things the legislative leadership works on, and uh, for us, uh, as you said, with other things in there, we’ll review it once we see what passes not just the Joint Finance Committee but what gets through the Assembly and the Senate.”

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Reporter: “Were you aware, then, before they were presented, and did you object to them?”

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Walker: “Again, those are all things we’ll talk about on Monday. We’ll talk about what we’re doing going forward. You know, there’s all sorts of ideas that float around the Capitol before the end of the Joint Finance Committee process. But, uh, I think it’s pretty clear lawmakers from both parties, as well as others, wanna make sure there’s changes, and we’re gonna make sure that happens starting with that meeting on Monday.”

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