Birds of a feather flock together: Dori Monson brings Tim Eyman on his show for a gripefest about Attorney General Bob Ferguson

Right wing talk show host Dori Mon­son invit­ed nui­sance spe­cial­ist Tim Eyman onto his show today to com­mis­er­ate with Eyman over his recent legal trou­bles and to joint­ly gripe at length about Attor­ney Gen­er­al Bob Fer­gu­son, the state’s chief law enforce­ment offi­cer. Loathing Fer­gu­son — “the most dan­ger­ous politi­cian in our state’s his­to­ry,” to quote Mon­son — is a shared pas­time of both men.

First elect­ed statewide in 2012, Fer­gu­son has racked up a series of legal vic­to­ries for the peo­ple of Wash­ing­ton over pow­er­ful inter­ests, scam­my com­pa­nies, and right wing lob­bies that is so long and so exten­sive it could fill a book.

In addi­tion to Eyman, Fer­gu­son has suc­cess­ful­ly tak­en on the Trump regime (dur­ing its four year-exis­tence), the Gro­cery Man­u­fac­tur­ers Asso­ci­a­tion, opi­oid man­u­fac­tur­ers like Mallinck­rodt, and stu­dent debt ser­vic­ing firm Navient.

Fer­gu­son has won so con­sis­tent­ly and so com­plete­ly that he has arguably become more dis­liked by the state’s right wing than Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee… and it’s easy to see that Inslee is absolute­ly despised by Wash­ing­ton’s Repub­li­can base.

Eyman resents hav­ing been held account­able for his bla­tant and repeat­ed vio­la­tions of pub­lic dis­clo­sure law, while Mon­son has not for­got­ten that in the fall of 2020, Fer­gu­son appealed to his sup­port­ers to con­tact Bon­neville Seat­tle regard­ing the com­pa­ny’s employ­ment of Mon­son as a radio per­son­al­i­ty after he post­ed a trans­pho­bic tweet dur­ing an autumn guber­na­to­r­i­al debate.

Bon­neville tem­porar­i­ly took Mon­son’s show off the air after that dis­play of intol­er­ance. The Sea­hawks, for their part, nixed Mon­son’s pregame and postgame host­ing gigs. Though Mon­son was rein­stat­ed sev­er­al weeks lat­er, he has not for­got­ten that Fer­gu­son cam­paigned for his ouster, and he made that clear today.

“I mean, as I’ve told my lis­ten­ers many times, two years ago, Bob Fer­gu­son sent out a let­ter to all of his donors ask­ing them to call my radio sta­tion… Bon­neville, thank you… to have me fired,” Mon­son said. “I mean, this was the attor­ney gen­er­al, the high­est legal office in the state of Wash­ing­ton. In one of the most bla­tant First Amend­ment vio­la­tions imag­in­able, because it is gov­ern­ment that can­not take away free speech. And he want­ed his donors to have me fired.”

It bears men­tion­ing here that Fer­gu­son was cam­paign­ing for Mon­son’s ouster not as the state’s chief law enforce­ment offi­cer, but as a well known cit­i­zen with a plat­form. Nat­u­ral­ly, Fer­gu­son’s First Amend­ment rights to speak and pub­lish freely are incon­se­quen­tial to Mon­son because Fer­gu­son is not a right winger.

Mon­son inter­views with Eyman fol­low a pre­dictable for­mu­la. They are usu­al­ly a seg­ment or two in length (Mon­son’s show is ad sup­port­ed, which means the show is divid­ed into seg­ments) and con­sist of the fol­low­ing elements:

1. Mon­son com­mis­er­ates with Eyman regard­ing the prob­lems that Eyman brought on him­self (but for which Eyman blames oth­ers, like Ferguson)
2. Mon­son heaps scorn on Attor­ney Gen­er­al Bob Fer­gu­son and invites Eyman to take his own turn throw­ing metaphor­i­cal darts at the dartboard
3. Mon­son asks Eyman a bunch of extreme­ly sym­pa­thet­ic soft­ball ques­tions about his sit­u­a­tion and how he’s cop­ing or responding
4. Mon­son allows Eyman to make a pub­lic plea to his lis­ten­ers for mon­ey and nudges Eyman to repeat said plea at the end of the seg­ment, while throw­ing in a not cred­i­ble state­ment that it’s not an endorse­ment of Eyman

Mon­son has allud­ed to these chats with Eyman at oth­er times (includ­ing when I was his guest) as though he is con­duct­ing hard hit­ting inter­views in which Eyman gets put on the hot seat. But there’s no grilling hap­pen­ing dur­ing these appear­ances. Mon­son is just giv­ing Eyman the equiv­a­lent of an infomercial.

Here’s a bit of tran­scribed dia­logue that illus­trates this point. This is ele­ment four:

DORI MONSON: All right. I got­ta run. Go ahead. Quick. Give me that legal defense thing again. [This is a ref­er­ence to Eyman’s web­site where peo­ple can give Tim Eyman mon­ey.]

TIM EYMAN: I real­ly appre­ci­ate it. It’s tim defense dot com. Tim defense dot com. And I just real­ly want to appeal this thing, not just for me, but to make sure they don’t do this to any­body else.

DORI MONSON: Yeah. And dis­claimer, not endorsed by The Dori Mon­son Show. Endorsed by the guy that I just invit­ed on.

TIM EYMAN: Oh, there you go. There you go.

DORI MONSON: Okay. All right, Tim.

TIM EYMAN: Real­ly appre­ci­ate you hav­ing me on, Dori.

DORI MONSON: Okay, all right, see you.

TIM EYMAN: Thank you, bud.

Not an endorse­ment, eh?

Birds of a feath­er flock togeth­er, as they say. There’s no rea­son for Dori Mon­son to pre­tend that he is some­how on a lev­el above Tim Eyman. They are both right wing grifters with a hus­tle who have shared aims and adversaries.

Mon­son’s hus­tle is his radio show. Eyman’s hus­tle used to be his ini­tia­tive fac­to­ry. Now it’s this and that: going to Michi­gan to work on a scheme his bud­dy Paul Jacob is involved in to dis­en­fran­chise vot­ers, fil­ing lots of law­suits as pro se lit­i­gant to tie up court resources in Thurston Coun­ty, pro­mot­ing Bri­an Hey­wood’s giant slate of eleven bad­ly con­ceived ini­tia­tives to the Leg­is­la­ture, and so on.

But one thing has not changed: Eyman’s need for mon­ey. He always needs more. Even when he was tak­ing kick­backs ten years ago and even before Bob Fer­gu­son filed a sin­gle law­suit against him, he did­n’t have enough. He was greedy. He want­ed more. He was will­ing to break the law to get more.

He assumed that there would­n’t be con­se­quences for his behav­ior. He assumed that if he stonewalled for long enough, he’d beat the rap. Those assump­tions were wrong. Eyman is free to loathe Bob Fer­gu­son for doing his job, but it is Eyman, not Fer­gu­son, who made the choic­es that land­ed him where he is now.