Tuesday was an angry day in Weinerland.
The campaign staff awoke to see their former intern, Olivia Nuzzi, on the front cover of the Daily News. Inside the paper was an article bylined by Nuzzi in which she told a rather unflattering tale of her experience working on Anthony Weiner’s mayoral bid.
Now, Team Weiner is firing back. TPM called Weiner’s communications director Barbara Morgan to discuss an unrelated story Tuesday and she went off on a curse-filled rant about Nuzzi, describing her as a fame hungry “bitch” who “sucked” at her job. Morgan also called Nuzzi a “slutbag,” “twat,” and “cunt” while threatening to sue her.
On Monday, Nuzzi, a college student and writer, published a story on the blog NSFWCORP that claimed multiple sources on the campaign told her there had been “six departures” from Weiner’s team, more than had been previously disclosed. She also claimed that staffers had been underpaid and that the former campaign manager, Danny Kedem, left over the weekend because Weiner “lied to him about the timing of his sexting scandal.”
Nuzzi’s post on NSFWCORP was followed up by Tuesday’s Daily News cover story in which she claimed Weiner incorrectly called multiple interns “Monica” and said people only joined Weiner’s campaign to curry favor with his wife, Huma Abedin, a close aide to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Along with these allegations, Nuzzi wrote in the Daily News that “a lot” of Weiner’s staff had “short résumés,” including Morgan, who Nuzzi derisively noted “last worked as the press secretary for the New Jersey state education commissioner.”
“I’m dealing with like stupid fucking interns who make it on to the cover of the Daily News even though they signed NDAs and/or they proceeded to trash me,” Morgan told TPM, referring to a non-disclosure agreement. “And by the way, I tried to fire her, but she begged to come back and I gave her a second chance.”
Morgan went on to suggest Nuzzi would be unable to get a job in New York City’s political scene as a result of her actions.
“Fucking slutbag. Nice fucking glamour shot on the cover of the Daily News. Man, see if you ever get a job in this town again,” said Morgan.
According to Morgan, Nuzzi stopped interning for the campaign “like four weeks ago.” Nuzzi’s story on NSFWCORP described her as having spent “four weeks” as a Weiner intern. When asked whether the claims in Nuzzi’s stories were true, Morgan suggested many of them were “bullshit.”
“It’s all bullshit,” she said. “I mean, it’s such bullshit. She could fucking — fucking twat.”
Based on her colorful description of Nuzzi’s cover story, TPM asked Morgan whether she thought Nuzzi joined the campaign with the express purpose of penning a tell-all story.
“I have no idea, but I can tell you she … like accosted me at like our petitioning thing to be able to become my intern, begged me to be my intern, sent me something within like 20 minutes of meeting her and then proceeded to — she came in the next day and was like, basically, ‘I want to be your bitch all summer long, that’s all I want to do is be your righthand person,'” Morgan said of Nuzzi. “I was like, ‘OK, well, it’s not really glamorous, like, you’re going to do clips, and you’re going to do media catching, and you’re going to do x, y, and z and maybe I’ll get you to the point where you’re like doing some other stuff.”
Despite what Morgan described as Nuzzi’s initial enthusiasm, Morgan claimed her job performance left much to be desired.
“She sucked. She like wasn’t good at setting up events. She was clearly there because she wanted to be seen. Like it was, like, terrible and I had to like – she would like, she would just not show up for work,” said Morgan. “For the four weeks she worked there — she didn’t work weekends, so twenty days total. Of those twenty days, she missed probably five because she would just like not show up and not tell me she wasn’t going to be there. So, yeah, so there’s that.”
Morgan also expressed disbelief that Nuzzi criticized her credentials.
“And then like she had the fucking balls to like trash me in the paper. And be like, ‘His communications director was last the press secretary of the Department of Education in New Jersey,” Morgan said. “You know what? Fuck you, you little cunt. I’m not joking, I am going to sue her.”
Nuzzi declined comment to comment for this story. However, NSFWCORP Editor-In-Chief Paul Carr disputed the idea Nuzzi joined the Weiner campaign specifically to write about the experience.
“She certainly didn’t do it to get on the front of the newspapers,” said Carr.
Carr said Nuzzi began writing for the site “like a month ago” and initially “didn’t even mention she was involved with the [Weiner] campaign.” He said the Daily News “courted” Nuzzi for the cover story and claimed she subsequently denied a request to appear on CNN’s Piers Morgan Tonight on Tuesday evening. Carr also claimed he had to push Nuzzi to write about her experiences on the Weiner campaign after she mentioned them to him.
“She wrote that for us because I basically told her she had to,” Carr said. “If anything, I’ve had to constantly prompt her.”
Updated at 10:22 p.m.ET: Morgan issued to a statement about her comments to Business Insider.
“In a moment of frustration, I used inappropriate language in what I thought was an off the record conversation. It was wrong and I am very sorry, which is what I said tonight when I called and emailed Olivia to apologize,” said Morgan.
Updated July 31, 2013 at 11:22 a.m. ET: Nuzzi said she accepted Morgan’s apology in a post on her Twitter page Wednesday morning.
