UPDATE: 12:35 p.m. ― The Leading Authorities speakers’ agency now claims that this whole half-baked idea was cooked up without the knowledge of any of the participants, which is apparently a thing people are allowed to do?
As BuzzFeed’s Ruby Cramer reports, Leading Authorities on Wednesday deleted the listing for Mook and Lewandowski’s joint appearance, and is now saying it was never really a listing at all. A spokesman for the agency said the now-removed material was “generated by our team.”
“There has been great interest in both Corey and Robby individually, but want to be clear that they have not teamed up,” the spokesman told BuzzFeed. “This was solely our team’s idea.”
There’s a chance this is all a dodge on the part of Leading Authorities. Or maybe this idea really did proceed from the concept stage straight to a forward-facing advertisement without any regard for actually getting Mook and Lewandowski to commit. Washington is a sleazy trickster town of nonsense! The important thing is that now, I’m the clown.
At any rate, everyone would be better served by this weird idea being scuttled.
UPDATE: 4:44 p.m. ― And Mook weighs in.
PREVIOUSLY:
After an electoral wipeout that saw Donald Trump in the White House and Democrats clinging to meager holdings in Congress and across the states, you’d think that the order of the day ― for those who had a hand in that failure, at least ― would be an intense period of soul-searching. Well, for former Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook, it seems he’d rather seek out a quick payday on the speakers’ circuit. As BuzzFeed’s Ruby Cramer reports:
In joint appearances across the country, Robby Mook and Corey Lewandowski will offer a “future-focused look at why Trump won” in what their speaking agency, Leading Authorities, promises will be an “entertaining pair sure to keep any audience engaged,” according to the Washington-based firm’s website.
The paid speech roadshow most often takes speakers to corporate gatherings, trade conferences, and universities. The contracts can deliver tens of thousands of dollars for each speech — and hundreds of thousands for names like Bill and Hillary Clinton.
Yep! While the Democratic base is settling in for a difficult slog of marching and organizing ― and looking to putative Democratic elites to lend whatever capital they can to the effort of being the sand in the gears for the next four years ― Mook is planning to embark on a whirlwind buckraking tour with Trump’s on-again-off-again aide-de-camp.
The last time these two were in a room together, at the Harvard Kennedy School’s quadrennial campaign post-mortem, there was no perceptible affection between them ― one observer told The Daily Beast’s Asawin Suebsaeng that Mook “looked like he wanted to strangle” Lewandowski. But there’s nothing like a Beltway speakers’ agency to unite people in the common cause of getting paid to cheese it up like organ grinders’ monkeys at corporate retreats.
Hopefully everyone working to maintain civil society, preserve scientific knowledge and protect those who will be affected by the coming injustices of the Trump administration will be able draw strength from the fact that the guy who ran Hillary Clinton’s supposedly inspiring presidential effort will be out there helping to “deliver behind-the-scenes anecdotes from one of the country’s most unpredictable election cycles” and offering “a balanced look at the future of public policy and the American electorate.”
This is what the world needs right now, Mook presumably thought to himself.
The really hilarious thing is that after all of this is over, Mook will likely find himself serving in a leadership capacity at some other important Democratic campaign, which he will lose.
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Jason Linkins edits “Eat The Press” for The Huffington Post and co-hosts the HuffPost Politics podcast “So, That Happened.” Subscribe here, and listen to the latest episode below.