“My honest and candid answers weren’t how I really felt”
UPDATE: Kurtis Lee at The Denver Post confirms our suspicion that this story is far from over. The many histories Hickenlooper has now told about the gun control laws have yet to be rectified with each other. Given the chance to set the story straight (if such a thing is still possible), Hickenlooper instead chooses to duck The Denver Post:
He has declined interview requests from The Denver Post, which sought to have the governor explain his videotaped June 13 comments and their apparent contradiction with published accounts of the debate and the gun laws’ passage. [the Peak‘s emphasis]
We’d like to know how many other press outlets have reached out to Hickenlooper and have been denied. If Hickenlooper has nothing to hide he should have no problem “clarifying” his story to all from the press who reach out to him.
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Shameless politics 101: when you’ve stuck your foot in your mouth you find a sympathetic outlet to tell your side of the story. Should it be any surprise to Colorado politic watchers then that the first one Gov. John Hickenlooper speaks to after his horrible week was KDVR’s Eli Stokols? If Hickenlooper truly had nothing to hide, he shouldn’t have had any problem sitting down with Colorado’s most respected political reporter, the grand dame, The Denver Post’s Lynn Bartels. Or, perhaps, her colleague, Kurtis Lee, who’s been nailing all the important questions Coloradans are left wondering after watching Hick’s comments to the sheriffs. Then again, if he’d gone with either of those two, he wouldn’t have gotten away with the limp responses he was able to give to Eli.
What should be most disturbing to Coloradans is Hickenlooper’s own admission that he didn’t know he was being recorded.
In his first interview on the subject, Hickenlooper told FOX31 Denver that he wasn’t aware he was being filmed last Friday during a meeting with the sheriffs in Aspen… [the Peak’s emphasis]
Welcome to Hick unvarnished: where anything goes and words don’t matter. Does this explain the bizarre crusade his spokesman Eric Brown has been on this past week? Brown, confident he could hide behind the Governor’s office prestige, felt he could easily call a sheriff out for lying, only to have the video completely prove the sheriff correct. His solution to that thorny situation? Attack a KRDO reporter who called him out on it. Are all the people who work for Hickenlooper so klassy?
In this follow-up to the video, Hick now gives his third version (or, would this now be his fifth or sixth version? We lost count here.) of how the gun bills came to pass. Yet, does Stokols try to press him on the myriad contradictions Hickenlooper has tossed out there now? (Cue crickets chirping).
“I talked to Bloomberg, but it was after we already made the decision,” Hickenlooper said
If talking to Bloomberg was no big deal, why did Hick deny talking to him just a week ago? People don’t lie about the insignificant things. Oh, did Eli not follow up with those questions? No worries Eli, there’s always room for more softball tossers on Entertainment Tonight.
On Friday, he acknowledged that he wasn’t hamstrung by a staffer’s promise…
Complete and utter contradiction to what he said when he didn’t think he was being recorded. Which answer do you think is more candid and honest PeakNation™. Don’t worry Hick tells us.
“They asked me questions, and I tried to give them honest, unscripted, candid answers. I was me.” [the Peak‘s emphasis]
Wait, so if those were Hickenlooper’s honest and candid answers up in Aspen, then what are these answers now that completely contradict those? (Hint: it rhymes with bullshit)
(Seriously Eli, Hickenlooper is tossing softballs right back at you. True political reporters can only dream for such an interview. A prominent political figure comes to you reeling and staggering (not a Hickenlooper pun), his political career barely hanging on, and one good question would be the knockout blow. Why do you think Udall is no longer talking to the press?)
This story isn’t done. We here at The Peak are still looking forward to a true reporter getting the real story out of Hickenlooper. Even everyone’s favorite homeless man liberal reporter Mike Littwin is licking his chops to get a shot at Hick right now.
Hick’s “frank” talk with sheriffs puts longstanding rumor back in play: top Hick official threatened to quit if he didn’t sign gun bills 1/1
— Michael Littwin (@mike_littwin) June 20, 2014
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