According to this Washington Post article
I thought I read earlier that Ryan denied the conversation ever happened, but I can’t find the cite. If so, he recanted fairly quickly, since as the quoted passage indicates, WaPo has a tape recording of the conversation.
The reports I saw said congressional spokespersons, maybe Ryan or McCarthy, denied the conversation happened. When informed the conversation was on tape they quickly changed to “It was just a joke.”
Looks like the same article you linked just further down than you may have looked.
I should have read the entire article. My excuse is that it’s late, and I’m tired.
And so to bed.
I too was guilty of Posting While Tired tonight. Had to laugh at your thread title, though. There’s a joke in there if I could just pull it out of my exhausted little brain…!
The tape apparently indicates that McCarthy and Ryan WERE laughing.
Meaning “it was just a joke” is probably true. That would explain why nobody remembered it (do you remember every joke you’ve made over the past year?).
That said, nobody should be surprised that many Republican insiders are mocking Trump behind his back. He DESERVES it.
It would have been a pointless joke if they thought there was nothing to it at all. A joke that Putin was paying Hillary Clinton or that Trump was being paid by the President of France wouldn’t have been funny.
Well, who knows. Let’s hear it first!
They were kidding on the square, like if you said about the office drunk “looks like Harry had another ‘church meeting’ last night” and everybody laughed.
The idea that Putin was paying Trump was OBVIOUSLY a joke.
The idea that Trump loves and stupidly parrots Putin was not.
McCarthy believes the latter, not the former.
Yes, it was definitely a joke…that Ryan immediately insisted needed to be kept secret to “protect the family”.
Because that’s how jokes work.
Yup. My reading is that McCarthy was jokingly saying about Trump, “I am concerned about potential ties between Trump and Russia. He does not speak like a neutral party, or as though he has America’s interests at the forefront.”
And Ryan is saying, “Please don’t express your concerns about ties between Trump and Russia in public; the last thing we need is for voters to realize that we’re worried about that.”
Only they said it funnier than me :(.
To be fair, it’s not clear that that was a response to the joke or not-joke. I’m assuming it was to the whole conversation in general. I’d have to hear the whole thing in context to decide whether it sounds fishy or not, but I’m leaning on the “dumb joke” side for this.
The McCarthy line is arguably a joke.
The correction to the laughter, “swear to God” is not.
The Ryan request to keep it secret is not.
Looks like there is a transcript included in the article. It seems to me that it’s plausible all the comments are in jest, given the “laughter” everywhere.
In Soviet Russia, blackmailer pays you!
This is one of those cases where a political gaffe means you accidentally told the truth.
The 900 pound gorilla has taken up residence, and nothing gets done until it leaves.
That being said, I strongly advise Brother Leaker not to go on any fishing trips in the future.
For that kind of “joke” to land, there would need to be some sort of Trump-Russia connection that the group was aware of, especially since it happened before all of the Russia stuff became so public.
In the ADM price-fixing case involving Marc Whitacre, the executives were laughing while fixing prices. The laughter is irrelevant.