IF ONLY THERE WERE PEOPLE WHOSE JOB IT WAS TO UNEARTH NEWSWORTHY FACTS!

Six hours ago, Mark Halperin tweeted:

Has no 1 yet found the man who asked Trump the question? I remain suspicious abt who he is, why he was there, why he asked that question.

— Mark Halperin (@MarkHalperin) September 19, 2015

And yesterday, guests on the Fox News program The Five speculated that the now-famous questioner was a plant:

During a discussion of the incident that occurred on Thursday at a Trump town hall in New Hampshire, in which the GOP frontrunner refused to correct a supporter who not only spread false rumors about the president but also called for the eradication of Muslims from the United States, both Kimberly Guilfoyle and Eric Bolling implied that the man in question was a “plant” or somehow not serious about his views.

“As far as Trump’s concerned with respect to this, I think that seems like a complete plant, it was a set up, it just sounds fake and phony and ridiculous,” Guilfoyle said of the man’s comments.

“It’s a joke, right?” Bolling agreed. “It’s almost comical the way it was delivered.”

While their Fox colleague tweeted:

Any word abt the fool at the Trump rally? Sure sounded like a put-up--cartoon presentation, bad acting. Where/who is he?

— Laura Ingraham (@IngrahamAngle) September 18, 2015

I'm confused. Fox calls itself "The Most Powerful Name in News." Halperin's breakthrough book, Game Change, was praised as "a marvel of reporting," and Halperin and coauthor John Heilemann were said to "have an uncanny ability to get scoops other reporters don't."

So, um, if Halperin and Fox are such powerful news gatherers, such "uncanny" scoop-getters, why don't they know who this guy is?

Is it because discovering who he is would involve actual, y'know, reporting?

As far as I know, for all its awesome, top-ranked news power, Fox doesn't do actual reporting. Halperin and Heilemann do reporting of sorts, but the kind they do involves chatting up insidery insiders who have the inside skinny. Old-fashioned shoe-leather journalism is what would be required to find this guy. These days, high-level journalists don't sully themselves with that, do they?

*****

The more this story circulates, the less I believe that the questioner was a plant. If he were a plant intended to put Trump on the spot regarding either President Obama or Muslims in general, I think he would have limited his targets to the president and/or Muslims as Muslims -- he wouldn't have bothered to bring up the alleged existence of terrorist training camps in the U.S., a notion that's very familiar on the right (and frequently promoted by Fox News), but unfamiliar to most non-conservatives. He would have kept it clean: Why can't we throw Hussein Obama in Gitmo? Why can't we just kill all the ragheads? His questioning was more complicated. So I think he was the real deal.

I'll note that he said he was from White Plains. There's no White Plains in New Hampshire or any contiguous state. I see from Twitchy that a lot of people believe he may be "Bill from White Plains," who made a name for himself with frequent calls to Don Imus's show (and who probably is a plant). But an Imus listener or viewer might decide to conceal his identity by using a name he's heard on Imus's show, so I'm not sure what that tells us.

In any case, a reporter ought to be able to find out. Are there any out there?

(Links via Mock Paper Scissors and Little Green Footballs.)