Blame the governor! Oklahoma’s “board meeting porn” scandal goes gonzo.

Only a week has passed since two Oklahoma Board of Education members complained about seeing nude women appear on a TV set during an official board meeting. And yet we've already reached the "just asking questions" stage of the scandal lifecycle, with the state's hard-right education boss wondering aloud if Oklahoma's governor might not be behind the whole thing.

On the surface, this appears an odd reaction. One might have expected Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters to agree with his outraged board members. You know, a sort of "Together we will unmask the degenerates who are making a mockery of our meetings with their streaming retro pornography!"

But no. Walters first put out a press release, titled "Response to the Most Absurd, False, and Gutter Political Attack from a Desperate, Failing Establishment," in which he said that "any suggestion that a device of mine was used to stream inappropriate content on the television set is categorically false."

Since then, Walters has just kept throwing metaphorical tanks of gasoline into this dumpster fire of a situation. On July 29, he recorded a video statement to X (formerly Twitter) in which he called the scandal the "nastiest political attack" and said it was based on "lies by board members." He then said the board members in question should "resign immediately in disgrace over the lies they have pushed about me."

He also held a more traditional press conference, standing at a podium filled with media company microphones, where he repeatedly said that the media are liars and that no one trusts them. (Shortly thereafter, he took questions from them.)

He also asked whether Oklahoma's governor had perhaps prompted the board members—whom the governor appointed—to make up the accusation as part of a coordinated smear campaign against him. "Did he direct these board members to lie about me?" Walters asked.

Next up were promises of retribution. "When you decide to lie about me in the way that several have," Walters said, "there will be consequences for those lies."