And let’s be clear, Ryan Lizza is the one who got thrown out of the club, Olivia Nuzzi is the one still very much in the club while Lizza is flogging poorly named substack.

Speaking as a journalist, it has long been clear — and more so all the time — that something is *rotting* in the world of New York and Washington political reporting. Actively, visibly suppurating. Oozing with maggots. Even as many of the people in that world have denied it.

I don't think every or even most journalists are this utterly corrupt. The investigative folks I know have always conducted themselves pretty scrupulously, and I'm currently forced to conclude that's why they haven't hit the big-time

So. Can any of us look at our colleagues in the political press corps of Washington/New York and say, with a straight face, that none of *them* would do this? That none of them would hold important stuff back to their own benefit? Throw sources over to cultivate bigger ones? Fuck a subject?

And of course, if Lizza *isn't* lying, then Nuzzi has broken every concievable ethical rule in journalism: fucking subjects, freelancing PR work, betraying sources, running catch and kill ops, all while pretending to be an objective writer. It is an absolutely jaw dropping level of corruption

And even if his allegations are wrong, Nuzzi *already* stood revealed as one of the most singularly dishonest and ethically compromised people in the industry. This was a known fact, and not only was she rewarded, many of her colleagues rushed to publicly congratulate her hiring to a plum job

It is the ugliest, most naked form of the old "save the *really* juicy stuff for the book" political journalist grift, and by its sheer tackiness reveals how slimy that broader grift is

I don't know what — or really, if anything — in Lizza's account is true, because I don't trust him as far as I can throw him. If *any* of it is true, the fact that we are only hearing about it now, after the fact, to drive subscriptions to his paywalled private newsletter, is frankly vile!

But now he sees her capitalizing off of cuckolding him and he is releasing it now to reassert his dominance over her.

They are both irredeemable pieces of shit.