Scott Walker: Prank Call No Big Deal

It was easy to dupe Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker into believing he was talking on the phone to billionaire backer David Koch—because he's clueless, says the journalist who punked Walker. Posing as Koch, Ian Murphy and Walker had a heart-to-heart during which the governor talked about tricking Democrats and planting troublemakers among protesters. "Fifteen minutes in, I wanted to almost stop it and say, 'Are you so dumb, I'm not David Koch. How can your staff be so incompetent and how could I get on the phone with you so easily,'" Murphy, editor of the Buffalo Beast, tells the Huffington Post. "But I didn't."

Walker, defending the call, said at a press conference yesterday: "I take phone calls all the time. The bottom line is, the things I said are things I said publicly all along. I'm not going to allow one prank phone call to be a distraction from the fact that we have a job to do." Murphy said he first wanted to pose as Hosni Mubarak, but couldn't perfect the accent. (More Wisconsin stories.)