Thread by @MattBraynard

While it was not as bad/unfair as many hit pieces, Buzzfeed's story was written in a duplicitous and scummy way by @mimms.

I'll explain, but first here's the complete interview since context is missing from some of the quotes.

The day after the interview (Friday), I was flying to Yuma. When I landed in the mid-afternoon got a message from Sarah asking me to respond to two "senior staff" sources trashing my work with the Trump campaign.

(The story neglected to mention that all of the "senior staff" on the campaign were either fired or sharply demoted when I departed.)

Anyway, these quotes were demonstrably false and, if they had been attributed, would result in defamation lawsuits from me. (try me, cowards)

I immediately called Sarah and told her I was on the road, I was fully booked for the next two days, and I did not have access to my computer where most of my evidence to counter this phony narrative was available.

I also needed time to get sources together who could speak to her - many who would agree to go on the record.

She told me that Monday (totally arbitrary) was the hard deadline and would not budge.

So I had to scramble and, apart from a fully booked schedule (I have not taken a full day off in months), I had to track down emails from 5 years ago and reach out to campaign co-workers I hadn't spoken to in years during a weekend when most people are on vacation).

Because I was on west coast time, I had availability on Saturday morning east coast time to go over material with her, but she said she was busy with a wedding.

So I had to work around on her deadline no matter what I was doing but she exempted herself because of a wedding.

While she gave the anonymous sources full quotes, she didn't quote any of my sources, some of whom were willing to go on the record. I gave her 12 people to reach out to and she says only 4 got back to her (late summer weekend ambush journalism).

I also shared many emails with her demonstrating beyond any doubt that I was running and executing the campaign's strategy. She quoted one small sentence out of one of them.

She also cited criticism I received from a Georgia rep but did not give me the opportunity to respond.

So between ambushing me with a short, arbitrary deadline to respond to people trying to destroy my career, refusing to quote my co-workers or the emails I gave her, and attacking me on matters without the chance to respond...

It will be a great chapter in my book.

PS: I deleted my earlier post linking to the book because nobody was getting the reference of my "mostly fair" comment to "mostly peaceful."

Well, a few did, but not enough.