New Jersey Governor Chris Christie made an appearance on a local radio show this morning where he gave a tough talk on fighting terrorism.
Christie says it's "unacceptable" that we aren't fighting back and, to that end, he called for launching a military strike on an unspecified location that I will interpret as Queens, New York.
Christie, speaking on WFAN sports radio, said "radical Islamic terrorists are out to kill us," when asked to respond to the Orlando shooting at a gay nightclub that left 49 people dead. The governor said it should spark a military response.
"You've got to get over there and make them pay where they live," Christie said on WFAN's Boomer & Carton Show.
The Orlando shooter, as you may know, was an American citizen born in Queens in 1986. That is "where they live." Is Governor Christie saying we should launch an attack on his neighboring state of New York? Is he saying we should launch an attack on Florida?
Is Chris Christie a blustering manchild?
The idea that we aren't fighting back is preposterous. The U.S. military and our allies have been bombing the self-titled Islamic State since the Fall of 2014. The terrorist organization has lost massive amounts of territory and fighters over the past year, with some estimates putting the number of ISIS fighters killed at over 26,000.
With all of that said, it increasingly appears that the Orlando shooter had little if any connection to ISIS. The shooter reportedly declared his allegiance to the terrorist organization during his attack, but he acted on his own and was not directed by anyone overseas. Furthermore, recent reports indicate the shooter himself may have been gay, having visited the Pulse nightclub every month for the past several years according to witnesses. The shooter also reportedly had a profile on the gay dating app Jack'd. We can only speculate, but it's possible the shooter's self-loathing homophobia had more to do with his attack than religious ideology. It's also possible we may never know.
Did Chris Christie consider any of this information before popping off and calling for military action? Has he even read the news over the past 24 hours?
Unfortunately, Christie was not pressed by his hosts to actually name a specific location we should launch an attack on.