[ElComradio]

I find it preposterous that it took this long to hear that Trump bus tape as well as the Stern recordings. If you were connected to either of these shows, wouldn't the first thing you did when Trump started to become a story was go looking through the material you had on him? It's simply not credible that they "just found" the bus tape. Was it lost behind a toilet somewhere? That they had this for a while now and were saving it for maximum impact is far more likely than it being only now discovered.

[spaceheeder]

Some of the Stern recordings were getting play during the primaries, but they weren't slowing Trump down since his opposition was split among so many different candidates.

The bus tape was archival footage. If you're suggesting that every hour of archival audio and video of Mr. Trump should have been sought after as soon as he became the nominee, then, again, you're underestimating just how volatile and fickle the news cycle is.

The plausibility of "the official story" (to reiterate: that the footage became an object of interest for NBC after former cast and crew from The Apprentice came forward to disclose his ill manner on the set of that show) seems pretty plain to me. Occam's razor defeats your conspiratorial thinking without breaking a sweat.

[ElComradio]

Occam's razor _supports_ my take.

Regarding Stern, CNN had as "BREAKING NEWS!@!" that Trump told Stern it was OK to call Ivanka a piece of ass. Possibly CNN was lying about presenting this as something they just discovered; is that what you are claiming?

Yes, I am suggesting that every show would have stuck someone (more likely, a team) on reviewing their material (prioritizing the outtake material, if anything) on Trump as soon as it turned out he was a big deal. I am not clear as to why you think this would not have occurred; why Occam's razor supports that viewpoint. The bus tape would have been a huge story at any time and would not have required building off interest in other stories to investigate (e.g. "Gee whiz, we should look at the archival footage and see what we have! Why didn't we think of this before!")

[vonmoltke]

CNN once called the sinking of the Titanic "BREAKING NEWS": http://www.mediaite.com/tv/cnn-breaks-news-of-titanic-sinkin....

[spaceheeder]

> I am not clear as to why you think this would not have occurred

Because those "teams" live from headline to headline and those sorts of fishing expeditions are expensive.