February 28, 2017 10:42 AM UTC

Walker Stapleton and the World's Saddest Blog Post

• 6 Comments
• by: Colorado Pols

State Treasurer Walker Stapleton is not funny. Not intentionally, anyway.

We feel compelled to point this out after reading a particularly-sad attempt at political spin from a local right-wing blog that is harder to swallow than a tennis ball.

Stapleton was interviewed last week by Kyle Clark of 9News, not long after Deputy Treasurer Jon Forbes resigned from the job after telling the PERA board to “go f*** themselves,” and the likely GOP gubernatorial candidate was asked some pretty direct questions that he did not answer well.

The entire interview, which you can view below, is not a good look for Stapleton, who says he “understands” the frustration with the PERA board that would prompt his former Deputy to fire off profanities as he storms out of the room. Stapleton also claims at one point that he has attended “at least 90 percent” of PERA board meetings in his six years as State Treasurer, a claim that is easy to disprove. The interview is obviously not a net positive for Stapleton, which is clear just from reading the video description provided by 9News: “Great moments in awkward question asking today when we asked Colorado’s Treasurer whether it’s the official position of his office that the pension board (PERA) members should go f— themselves.”

So it was that on Monday, the right-wing blog Colorado Peak Politics tried very hard to spin the idea that Stapleton is a really funny guy who is great at deflecting difficult questions with humor and a quick wit. Um…yeah:

There are a lot of reasons that people like state Treasurer Walker Stapleton, but perhaps the most obvious is his dry, often sarcastic, sense of humor. Last week, he sat down with 9News’s Kyle Clark, and in the face of some relatively trivial “gotcha” questions Stapleton showed off these winning attributes. It’s worth watching, especially if you’re like us and keeping a close eye on the moves of potential gubernatorial candidates.

When asked about the semantics of how he described his involvement in the drafting of a bill to change the makeup of the board for the Public Employee Retirement Association (PERA), Stapleton replied that while he “didn’t follow Sen. Tate into the drafting room” (ha!) he has long supported the idea and been a champion for the legislation… [Pols emphasis]

…By using sarcasm, Stapleton is able to diffuse needing questions and in many cases point out their silliness.

Hee-larious! If any of this was meant to be a joke — and it’s not clear that Stapleton is even trying to be funny here — we’re not ashamed to admit that we missed the humor entirely. Clark does ask some tough questions of Stapleton, but the questions are both fair and largely predictable. Stapleton’s answers are not very good nor particularly funny.

This is not a “gotcha” interview. This is just a straightforward sit-down that Stapleton does not handle well, which is how a conservative blog ends up writing a ham-fisted defense that reads like something Stapleton himself might have invented.