How the D.C. Press Cost Bardella His Job, Gave Him a New One

Kurt Bardella/ Twitter
Elspeth Reeve 517 Views Apr 15, 2011

Former Rep. Darrell Issa spokesman Kurt Bardella pissed off half the Washington press corps by sharing emails from two reporters with a third. He was an "unethical" "self-promoter"--maybe an "imposter"--journalists said, and Issa quickly fired him. But the press simply couldn't hate him forever: Politico, home to the very reporters whose e-mail confidentiality was breached, has published two op-eds by Bardella, the latest on Sunday. And now the 27-year-old has joined the industry that ousted him, though not the particular publication: The Daily Caller, a conservative news site started by Tucker Carlson, has hired Bardella as director of communications, The Huffington Post's Michael Calderone reports.

As Fishbowl DC's Betsy Rothstein noted earlier this week, "Politico paved the way for Bardella getting fired last month after the former House aide leaked emails from reporters to [New York Times] writer Mark Leibovich, who's on leave to write a book about the incestuousness culture of Washington. With each passing day, this arrangement only appears to preposterously reinforce the premise of Leibovich’s book."

And at the site of Bardella's former freelancing gig, Keach Hagey calls the hire "an interesting move in Washington’s game of musical chairs, as the Daily Caller's former spokeswoman, Becca Glover Watkins, left at the end of February to become Issa’s deputy press secretary." Remember that group of friends in college, the ones who all lived together in a group house or two, and all slept together and it was kind of gross? That seems to be what Washington is like all the time.

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