MADISON, Wis. – The conservative website Wisconsin Right Now posted three episodes of a podcast series that Republican activists claimed that law professor Ryan Owens showed himself less than faithful to the party. The episodes forced Owens to withdraw last week as a GOP candidate for attorney general. The episodes included interviews with critics of former President Trump. A fourth episode, however, was not reposted because Right Now said it couldn’t be found. The missing episode featured an interview with conservative Milwaukee political commentator Charlie Sykes, a longtime Trump critic. In a recovered episode, Owens questioned whether Republican U.S. senators Ted Cruz of Texas and Marco Rubio of Florida would turn against Trump during his first impeachment trial.
Lost tapes
Ryan Owens director of UW-Madison’s Tommy G. Thompson Center on Public Leadership, hosted a political blog for the center. The series included episodes in which Owens posed inconvenient questions about some prominent Republican on the national stage. After a hullbaloo erupted over the episodes, they disappeared, apparently in a website update. Amid the fuss over the episodes, the University of Wisconsin ordered that the deleted episodes be restored. Only three could be found. The fourth episode included a guest, and perhaps Owens, voicing criticism of Trump.