j-mar, for breaking this thing you mean rumors of this particular nature, the harassment issue? yes, this particular incident. specifically, that j-mar so masterfully reported on in politico. my ex-colleague, hats off to you. thank you. but no smoking gun. of course, in campaign, you obviously hear from rivalry campaigns, you know, touting, you know, details about the other campaign, but i will say that i hadn t experienced that, but there had been rumors, just around washington, about this, and around this campaign. so jonathan, just to make it official, doing my job, you re not going to tell me who the source is? i am not going to talk about my source. okay, now we know. at the national press club today he responded, mr. cain did, to a question about whether he thinks another campaign leaked the information to the press. let s listen to mr. cain. i told you this bull s-eye on my back has gotten bigger. i have no idea. we have no idea the source of this witch hunt.
i m trying to figure the motive. it would seem to be i don t want to speculate, because i always speculate in my mind, but i don t want to do it here, as to who would gain from the fall of herman cain? i don t think the liberals would be after him at this point. he doesn t look like the nominee. but who would be after him would be a fellow conservative who s competing with him to go on against mitt romney. that doesn t tell you who did it, it simply gives you a possible motive for someone. and you heard herman cain today call it a witch hunt, and obviously conservatives are blaming it on the liberal media. but i will say, i think there have been rumors about this swirling around his campaign, swirling around press organizations. and you know, kudos to you, j-mar, for breaking this thing you mean rumors of this particular nature, the harassment issue? yes, this particular incident. specifically, that j-mar so masterfully reported on in politico. my ex-colleague, hats off to yo
well, i think that certainly if another campaign were to step forward at this point and attack herman cain over this issue, that would instantly reshape the narrative that we re dealing with. know now what about if they leaked this story? you can t say, because it s one of your colleagues, you probably don t even know where this story came from. it was broken by j-mar, but jonathan martin, but let me ask you, do you think it s a story as to where this story came from? is that a legitimate political question to ask? who is putting out the dirt on somebody else in the republican party? i think people are welcome into looking into whatever kind of opposition research the campaigns may or may not be doing. but i think it s important, chris, and i want to address one thing that mr. cain said. he said this is a smear campaign orchestrated against him. one of the defining features of a smear campaign is usually the allegations are not true. and mr. cain, in this situation, has confirm
this complete reversal that we ll hear more about on fox news tonight. i think you are hearing some pushback from conservatives, saying basically that this is another example of the liberal press trying to bring down a black conservative. they re namedropping clarence thomas and drawing comparisons to that. but it does seem like he has stumbled into a real big mess here, primarily because there s that clear flip-flop, there s that clear reversal from earlier in the day, when he said he had no idea of this settlement, which i think to some people s ears, did strike them as odd. there seemed to be an acknowledgement that the complaints were made. and then to sort of say, he had no idea that a settlement was made when it was made, i think, struck people as odd. so now we have him here, clearly contradicting himself from earlier today. he s definitely developing this story as he goes along. this is called what s it called? rolling disclosure, we call it in our business, right, j., jona