Another person closely associated with the Bridgegate scandal in New Jersey was ousted last week, raising fresh questions for Governor Chris Christie as another of his hand-picked officials finds themselves deposed.
Some people would say where there's smoke there's fire, but Chris Christie says there's no there, there. When asked about the growing number of his appointees displaying bad judgement, Christie told Meet the Press host Chuck Todd that people need to stop reading the news.
"Let's stop reading the newspapers and just blathering back what is that, OK? Here's the bottom line. When you have all these folks working for you, and David included, the fact is that you hold them to high standards," Christie continued. "And if they don't meet those high standards, what a decisive leader does, is you take action and you terminate them. And that's what you do if you don't think they've been held to the standards. That's the standard I hold myself to and everyone else to."
By Chris Christie's standards, everyone including himself should stop "blathering" about Hillary Clinton's emails.
I won't say Christie is necessarily wrong about the press or even the investigation of his administration, but I will say there's an inescapable irony in him implying the newspapers are out to get him.
Nothing drives clicks and pageviews like a fake Clinton scandals (is there any other kind?) and yet Christie won't tell anyone to "stop reading the newspapers" because of that.
Christie has actually called for a criminal investigation of Hillary Clinton over a story that, as you know, has been ginned up by an political press that has been openly hostile to the Clintons for over 20 years. The political press has gotten the story on Hillary Clinton so wrong so many times it has actually led to a shake-up at the New York Times.
There was a time not very long ago when the press fawned over Chris Christie in ways the Clintons have never enjoyed.