Walker Smug, Hostile to Workers in Prank Call from Fake Billionaire

Believing he was talking to an out-of-state billionaire who helped bankroll his campaign, union-busting Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker spent 20 minutes on the phone Tuesday promising Tea Party financier "David Koch" that he wouldn't back down, no matter what.

Walker actually was talking to blogger Ian Murphy, who simply called Walker's office, told an assistant he was David Koch and explained that he couldn't leave his number because a "maid" had thrown his cell phone in the washing machine. So he was given a slot on Walker's afternoon schedule to call back.

Walker gave "Koch" a play-by-play of his schemes to end collective bargaining rights for public employees and to force Democratic senators, who left the state in solidarity with protesting workers, to return. That way, the Republican-led Senate would have the quorum it needs to pass his bill. Walker made it clear that he has no intention of taking any Democrat’s opinion into account. "I’ll talk to them," he said. "But I won’t negotiate."

At one point, "Koch" told Walker that, "We were thinking about planting some troublemakers" in the protest crowds, and Walker said he'd thought about that, too. He said he decided against it out of fears it would backfire, not because of any moral or ethical concerns.

Walker told Koch about a dinner with his cabinet the night after the Super Bowl. "Talked about what we were gonna do, how we were gonna do it. We'd already kinda built plans up, but it was kind of the last hurrah before we dropped the bomb," he boasted.

"And I stood up and I pulled out a picture of Ronald Reagan, and I said, you know, this may seem a little melodramatic, but 30 years ago, Ronald Reagan, whose 100th birthday we just celebrated the day before, had one of the most defining moments of his political career, not just his presidency, when he fired the air-traffic controllers."

Click here for the Wisconsin State Journal's webpage to listen to the call or read the full transcript.