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SALT LAKE CITY — Gawker announced Tuesday that the website had hired a current Fox News employee to spill secrets in a regular column for the site about Fox News Channel.
The inaugural column features leaked footage of a conversation between Mitt Romney and Fox host Sean Hannity.
Hannity and Romney can be heard discussing tennis and horseback riding.
"She said, I've got to get some time on the horse … get away from you," Romney joked at one point, talking about his wife, Ann Romney.
Romney and Hannity at one point discuss being careful about spending too much time primping pre-interview.
"You don't want to have a John Edwards moment," Hannity said, referring to footage from the 2008 presidential campaign of Edwards fixing his hair.
At one point, Hannity changed ties so the interview, which would be broadcast over two days, would look "fresh" the next day.
"I'll take the pink one," Romney joked, but then refused to make the change.
"I'll just look like a schlep who wears the same tie two days in a row," he said.
A Fox News spokesperson told Mediaite on Wednesday that the mole had been discovered and that "we're exploring legal options at this time."
The mole responded Wednesday on Gawker, saying that "If Fox has smoked me out, it's news to me."
Fox issued another brief statement in response: "We know who it is."
Couch potato nation?
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie on Tuesday attacked the "paternalistic entitlement society" that the U.S. has become, saying it is a danger to the country both morally and financially because "we'll have a bunch of people sittin' on a couch waiting for their next government check."
Christie was speaking at the Bush Institute Conference on Taxes and Economic Growth in New York City.
He said the current state of affairs "will not just bankrupt us financially, it will bankrupt us morally because when the American people no longer believe that this a place where only their willingness to work hard … determines their success in life," according to Politico.
Pres. Bush wishes ‘Bush tax cuts' were called something else
Former Pres. George W. Bush told the New York Historical Society on Tuesday that he wishes the Bush tax cuts didn't have his name attached to them.
"If they were called somebody else's tax cuts, they'd probably be less likely to be raised," he said, according to ABC News.
It was a rare commentary on policy from the former president, who has for the most part stayed out of the public eye for the past four years.
Bush also said at the gathering that he does not miss the presidency.
"I enjoyed it; it was an unbelievably interesting experience," he said, according to USA Today. "It was inconvenient to have to stop at some stop signs — stop lights — coming over here, but I guess I miss that."
A new way for Romney to gain sweater vest supporters?The creator of the Santorum sweater vest said on The Steve Cochran Show that Tim Pawlenty had leaned on him to switch from making sweater vests to making "Mitt wear."
"I'm gonna be waiting for my phone for Mitt Romney to give me a call, and we'll start making something for him," Bill Batchelder, owner of Bemidji Woolen Mills, said in audio acquired by Buzzfeed.
Batchelder, who is a delegate to the GOP national convention, said he is awaiting instructions from Rick Santorum to see whether he will support Romney.
"I'm going to do whatever Rick Santorum tells me to do," he said.
