Bush's Bulge - how Bush cheated his way through the debates...

12/20/04: Speaking at a rare news conference, Bush suddenly stops, bends his head down, and mumbles something into his tie, then lifts his head and continues. It's bizarre! Watch the brief video clip courtesy of Crooks and Liars.

11/7/04: Contradicting the bulletproof vest "consensus," Master of the Universe Karl Rove insists "there was nothing there." With all these lying liars, I'm sticking with the defibrillator theory.

On one sideline row during the campaign, Rove said the president's tailor was devastated about a controversy over a box-shaped bulge in Bush's back that television cameras captured during the first debate. The mysterious bulge spawned speculation that Bush aides were feeding the president advice secretly through a radio receiver tucked under his suit jacket.

"Nothing was under his jacket," Rove said.

"The poor tailor ... he's an awfully nice fellow, he's a rather flamboyant dude," Rove said. "I'm not going to use his name, but he's just - he's horrified. And, you know, it's - there was nothing there."

11/5/04: Bush's French (horreur!) tailor, Georges de Paris, now says it was a bulletproof vest, according to the ever clueless Bush-loving NY Times reporter Elizabeth Bumiller, in a story she filed on 11/7/04.

The president's tailor is feeling a bit ruffled

De Paris, 70, was visited a few weeks earlier by The Hill, a weekly newspaper that covers Congress, and told the reporter seeking to solve the bulge mystery that the protuberance was nothing more than a natural pucker that occurs when a man's jacket is pulled taut against his back.

The Internet quickly deemed de Paris's assertion nonsense, and by last Thursday, so had The Hill. Citing sources in the Secret Service, The Hill reported that the bulge was the outline of a bulletproof vest.

The White House earlier denied that it was and is sticking to that statement. A Secret Service spokesman, Tom Mazur, shed no further light.

"I can't comment on our protective measures," he said.

But de Paris, for one, now believes that the bulge was a bulletproof vest. At the least, a bulletproof vest would get him and his supposedly bad work off the hook.

11/4/04: The Hill says it was a bulletproof vest, and that's "the last word."

The last word on Bush’s bulge

Call off the conspiracy freaks. Now it can be told: That mysterious bulge on President Bush’s back during the first presidential debate was not an electronic device feeding him answers, but a strap holding his bulletproof vest in place.

Speculation about the bulge on the Internet only increased since Georges de Paris, the Washington tailor who makes Bush’s suits, told The Hill last month that it was nothing more than a pucker on the back of Bush’s coat caused when he crossed his arms.

But sources in the Secret Service told The Hill that Bush was wearing a bulletproof vest, as he does most of the time when appearing in public. The president’s handlers did not want to admit as much during the campaign, for fear of disclosing information related to his personal security while he was on the campaign trail.

I am continuing my investigation into the mysterious bulge in Bush's back during the three debates.

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