Now that I've sufficiently sobered up from the political midget mud wrestling marathon -- I mean, Republican presidential debate -- to evaluate Christie's performance, I'm happy to report that the way his true colors shined through rivaled Donald Trump's. But I also have to say that Christie was set up a little.
For hosts Fox News, pretty much the media arm of the Republican party, their marching orders were clear -- make Jeb Bush look better and frontrunner Donald Trump look worse. Bush got softball questions that allowed him to appear passionate yet lucid; Trump was prodded into his trademark ranting and raving; and Christie was pitted against a candidate who opposes him on a security issue, sending him into
bully attack mode:
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ThinkProgress:...Christie said...“I was appointed U.S. Attorney by President Bush on September 10th, 2001, and the world changed enormously the next day, and that happened in my state. This is not theoretical to me...” In his closing remarks, Christie repeated the claim and date.
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DailyKos: Setting aside that it is the (Foreign Intelligence) "Surveillance" Court...(not the Foreign Intelligence "Service" Court)...and that U.S. attorneys don't go before the FISC, there's a big problem here. Maybe Christie was so affected by the events of that day and the aftermath that his memory has got all foggy...Christie wasn't nominated for the U.S. attorney post until December (2001) of that year and started in January 2002...
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EmptyWheel.com: The intervening crisis caused by the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington then delayed action on the nomination. In the interview for (his biography), Christie said he didn’t hear again from the White House for two weeks and that things were slowed because there were no available FBI agents to do background checks, as they had been assigned to investigating the 9/11 attacks...
UPDATE: In an absolutely hysterical attempt to rebut the clear fact that he was not nominated when he said he was, Christie’s people said he was informed he would be on September 10 at 4:30...But the rest of the explanation makes it clear they hadn’t even done a background check yet!
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Asbury Park Press: What actually happened on Sept. 10, 2001 is that Christie was informed by the White House that President George W. Bush had decided to nominate him as U.S. attorney. In a 2011 interview for (his) biography...Christie said the job offer was formally extended on that date by White House counsel Alberto Gonzales in a 4:30 p.m. phone call...
Christie spokesman Kevin Roberts said the reports criticizing Christie’s use of the word ‘appointed’ have “been totally incorrect” and pointed to morning newspaper coverage from Sept. 11, 2001 saying Christie had been nominated a day earlier.
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If the background check had not begun, never mind been completed, prior to September 2001, then Christie had been neither nominated nor appointed -- he'd only been "put under consideration" for the position. Also, deflecting from his hugging that evil President Obama by saying he can only remember hugging those affected by the 9/11 attack is downright shabby. Doesn't Christie remember that a candidate was pretty much knocked out of the 2008 presidential race by being described as "a noun, a verb, and 9/11"?