Last week, the ousted (but supremely well golden-parachuted) chairman of FreedomWorks, Dick Armey, gave an exclusive interview to the left-of-center Media Matters, in which he described the elaborate-but-ultimately useless financial deals between the Tea Party-affiliated organization and conservative mouthpieces Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. These cash giveaways rankled Armey, because, to his estimation, they provided little bang for large bucks. You'd think that conservatives might join in the obvious profligacy Armey described, but instead there was umbrage thrown in Armey's direction from conservatives that were stunned that Armey spoke to Media Matters.
Also stunned that Dick Armey spoke to Media Matters? Dick Armey, apparently!
Yes, according to a piece in the Daily Caller today, Dick Armey is claiming that he "had no idea he was speaking to the left-wing Media Matters organization," when he described the pointless payola schemes his FreedomWorks colleagues had cooked up to funnel money raised through donations (as well as charges levied on FreedomWorks members to attend FreedomWorks events) to multimillionaire blowhards, for the privilege of hearing them say nice things about FreedomWorks that one imagines they would say for free, if they really believed in them.
Armey tells the Daily Caller that he didn't become aware that he'd talked to someone liberal until it was pointed out to him on Facebook by someone more disgruntled that he'd spoken to Media Matters than about the actual dumb things that FreedomWorks was doing with its money.
But, as they say, it gets better:
“I wouldn’t know Media Matters from a hole in the wall,” the 72-year-old told TheDC. “That was a major, big screw up on my part. I thought they were somebody else.”
When asked who he thought Media Matters was, Armey replied, “Who’s the guy with the red beard that always does the show where he points out how biased the press is?”
That would be Brent Bozell, of the right-of-center Media Research Center.
The hilarious thing here is that Media Matters seems to care more about how badly FreedomWorks is misusing the money of conservative activists than many conservatives are. And now the person having to explain himself is Armey.
Political tribalism is pretty weird, guys.
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