The Republican primary campaign revealed (or rather reestablished) that Donald Trump is a bigot and a sexist and a creep. In fairness, this was not entirely a testament to fearless journalism; Trump happily exhibited all of these behaviors in front of live television cameras week after week. But reporters and campaigns did bring incidents of bigotry, sexism, and creepiness from his past to light, which helped feed the public’s exceedingly negative impression of the GOP’s new standard-bearer.

Despite months of digging, though, they may have only scratched the surface of Trump’s public and private sordidness. Now that he’s effectively secured the Republican Party nomination, we can expect the full details to pour out in the weeks and months ahead.

Before he dropped out of the race, Ted Cruz predicted this would happen. He attributed it to a liberal conspiracy: The media would sit on their most explosive Trump exposés until he’d won the nomination thanks to the invaluable free airtime they’d given him—and then destroy him with a series of damning revelations they’d been waiting to unleash.

Cruz’s suspicions gained a patina of plausibility this past week when The Washington Post resurfaced evidence that, until two decades ago, Trump would bizarrely call reporters posing as one of two fictional publicists (John Miller or John Barron) and brag about his own business and romantic conquests, real and imagined.

Among other things, we learned from the tapes that Republicans have nominated an egomaniac with an Andy Kaufmanesque repertoire and his very own Tony Clifton-style alter egos. But did the media actually hold this story intentionally, to lull Republican voters into nominating Trump before lowering the boom? Some conservatives would like you to believe as much: