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The Political Scene | The New Yorker

Jane Mayer on James O'Keefe's Botched Sting

The Political Scene | The New Yorker

The New Yorker

Washington, News, Politics, President, Wickenden, Wnyc, Barack, Obama, Lizza

4.33.9K Ratings

🗓️ 23 May 2016

⏱️ 12 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

On March 16th, a foreign donor who identified himself as Victor left a voice message at the offices of the Soros-funded Open Society Foundations. Then he forgot to hang up the phone, and the machine recorded “Victor” and his staff describing what sounded like an entrapment scheme. This week, James O'Keefe, the conservative activist whose undercover videos have embarrassed Planned Parenthood, NPR, and ACORN, outted himself as the caller, and apologized to his supporters for the failed operation. On “The New Yorker Radio Hour,” The New Yorkers Jane Mayer goes through the voicemail recording to see what it tells us about O'Keefe's methods and the scope of his ambitions: “What needs to happen,” he says, “is someone other than me make a hundred calls like that.”

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Transcript

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I'm Dorothy Wickendon on today's Politics and More podcast, New Yorker staff writer Jane

1:17.0

Mayer discusses the conservative activist James O'Keefe. In March, O'Keefe, who is best known

1:23.3

for producing undercover videos that attempt to discredit liberal institutions, was himself

1:28.5

caught on tape, planning a sting operation targeting the George Soros-funded Open Society

1:33.9

Foundations.

1:37.0

James O'Keefe is a conservative activist known for his undercover videos that have embarrassed

1:42.6

NPR, ACORN, Planned Parenthood. He recently had an

1:47.3

operation go awry, and it exposed some of his working methods. It all started with a phone call.

1:54.4

New Yorker staff writer Jane Mayer takes it from there. The phone call came into the Open Society

1:59.2

Foundation. Now that's George Soros' group, which funds a lot of

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