Tim Grieve, Salon, August 7, 2007
Robert Novak said on “The Diane Rehm Show” Monday that George W. Bush has cut him off “the list of conservative columnists” invited to the White House because he’s now considered to be “a lot of trouble.”
Don’t feel sorry for Novak yet? Well, then, consider this: The man who wrote the column that outed Valerie Plame says he’s had a “very difficult time” as a result.
“It really estranged relations between me and Karl Rove,” Novak told Rehm Monday. “His lawyers told him not to speak to me. We’re talking again now, but I don’t think our relationship can ever be what it was.”
Still don’t feel sorry for the man who calls himself “The Prince of Darkness”? There’s more:
“The abuse — you can’t imagine the abuse I get in e-mails. People say things in e-mails … that are absolutely … dreadful. [Plamegate] cost me financially, it cost me very heavy legal fees — about $160,000. And then you have, beyond that, I wasn’t on ‘Meet the Press’ for a number of years, and it helped poison my relationship with CNN … They didn’t want me on the air if I couldn’t talk about [the Plame case] … It was not a happy time for me … Some people think, ‘Gee, you got a lot of publicity.’ Well, the last thing I need is publicity.”