The stories you want. The opinions that matter.
No, thanks
Tag: chris christie
Chris Christie

Christie Mocked Hilariously As He Bids For Anti-Trump Redemption

Reprinted with permission from AlterNet

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) may have an anti-Trump stance in the public eye now but Bulwark writer Tim Miller is explaining why his pushback is a decade too late.

Miller pointed to a tweet highlighting a quote from Christie that read, "I've never walked away from an argument, no matter who stood on the other side," Christie told me during a wide-ranging interview in New Jersey.

He went on to note the main problem with Christie's remarks: The former governor talks a good game but fails miserably at backing it up.

"Like every other pathetic, podgy, scared, insecure bully who has ever disgraced a schoolyard, Chris Christie talks a big game," Miller wrote. "But when he was called upon to meet the biggest threat of his life—a doughy, soft-handed trust-fund baby with authoritarian aspirations—Christie didn't just walk away from an argument. He waddled as fast as he could go in his urine-soaked pull-ups."

Referencing an incident that occurred back in February of 2016, Miller explained how Christie blunder on the campaign trail. At the time, the former governor had launched his presidential bid, running alongside the likes of former President Donald Trump and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL). He needed a campaign boost in New Hampshire but instead of taking aim at the candidate he should have challenged, Christie went after Rubio.

"Christie surveyed the stage and decided to try and butch himself up by taking on the runt of the pack: He ignored Trump and whaled on Lil' Marco, to the delight of many," Miller wrote. "To the delight, in fact, of Trump."

In his book, Christie also recounted what transpired between him and Trump after the debate as he alluded to why he targeted Rubio instead.

"I felt a tap on my shoulder. It was Donald Trump," Christie wrote in his book. "Donald put his arm around me and said, 'God, you destroyed him. . . . You're the only one who could have done that. Just remember: I haven't said anything bad about you. Don't go after me.'"

Miller went on to explain how Christie's wrong move not only impacted Rubio but also tanked his own campaign in New Hampshire.

"Christie succeeded in blunting Marco's momentum, but did nothing to boost himself. Three days later Trump went on to win New Hampshire in a rout, Marco fell to fifth, and Christie bottomed out in sixth," he wrote. "After which he walked away from the race without ever having even thrown an unkind glance in Trump's general direction."

However, Christie's behavior didn't stop there. It only grew worse in the months that followed as the 2016 presidential election approached.

"Right at the moment when the Republican party needed to unite against Trump, Christie gassed the fellow up," Miller noted.

Highlighting a number of Christie's other embarrassing blunders, Miller explained why he has made it to the point of no return.

He wrote:

  • Christie stood next to Trump pliantly as he ranted and raved.
  • It was leaked, maybe apocryphally, that he was assigned the job of fetching Trump's hamburgers.
  • He stood by as Trump told him to stop eating Oreos.
  • After an event in Arkansas, he obediently walked up to Trump looking for a pat on the head but instead he was shooed off and instructed to "go home."
  • He weirdly referred to him throughout the campaign as "Mr. Trump," despite the fact that he was a sitting governor and Trump was a former game-show host.
Despite Christie's latest attempt at redemption, Miller concluded, "Christie is six years late and one insurrection short and I will not be respecting his authorit-aye."
Gaetz Funneled $100K To Christie's Dubious Pro-Trump ’Nonprofit’

Gaetz Funneled $100K To Christie's Dubious Pro-Trump ’Nonprofit’

In December 2019, when then-President Donald Trump was facing his first of two impeachments, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie launched the nonprofit Right Direction America to defend him. The 2022 campaign of far-right Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, a hardcore Trumpista, donated $100,000 to the nonprofit earlier this year during Trump's second impeachment — and journalist Roger Sollenberger, in an article published by the Daily Beast, stresses that the donation raises some questions.

Read NowShow less
Sen. Mitch McConnell, top left, former Vice President Pence, top right, and former Attorney General William Barr .

Trump Ripped Former GOP Allies In Furious Interview

Reprinted with permission from Alternet

No matter how much a Republican has done for Donald Trump, the former president can easily turn against them if he feels they have let him down in some way — and that includes former Vice President Mike Pence, former U.S. Attorney General William Barr and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. They all were his targets for an interview featured in Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker's new book, I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump's Catastrophic Final Year.

On March 31, Washington Post reporters Leonnig and Rucker interviewed Trump in person for their book at his Mar-a-Lago resort in South Florida. I Alone Can Fix It is being released half a year into Joe Biden's presidency; it was six months ago, on January 20, that Trump vacated the White House and Biden was sworn into office. Highlights of that interview can be found in a book excerpt published by Vanity Fair.

During the interview, Trump promoted the false and debunked conspiracy theory that he won the 2020 election — which, in fact, he lost by more than 7 million votes. And Trump believes that Pence let him down by not preventing Congress from affirming Biden's Electoral College victory on January 6, the day a violent mob of Trump's supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol Building.

The ex-president told Leonnig and Rucker, "The greatest fraud ever perpetrated in this country was this last election. It was rigged, and it was stolen. It was both. It was a combination, and Bill Barr didn't do anything about it."

In December 2020, Trump was furious when Barr told the Associated Press that there was no evidence proving the type of widespread voter fraud that Trump was alleging. As much of a Trump loyalist as Barr had been, he acknowledged that Biden was the United States' legitimate president-elect.

Trump told Leonnig and Rucker, "Barr disliked me at the end, in my opinion, and that's why he made the statement about the election, because he did not know. And I like Bill Barr, just so you know. I think he started off as a great patriot, but I don't believe he finished that way."

Similarly, Trump believes that Pence let him down as well. Pence, in early January, stressed that as vice president, he didn't have the authority to reverse the Electoral College results. But as Trump saw it, he wasn't trying hard enough.

At Mar-a-Lago, Trump told Leonnig and Rucker, "Had Mike Pence had the courage to send it back to the legislatures, you would have had a different outcome, in my opinion. I think that the vice president of the United States must protect the Constitution of the United States. I don't believe he's just supposed to be a statue who gets these votes from the states and immediately hands them over. If you see fraud, then I believe you have an obligation to do one of a number of things."

On Capitol Hill, Democrats view Sen. Mitch McConnell as a fierce and unyielding partisan who fights them every step of the way. But Trump doesn't agree.

Thanks in part to McConnell, all three of Trump's Supreme Court nominees are now on the High Court: Justice Brett Kavanaugh, Justice Neil Gorsuch, and Justice Amy Coney Barrett. Yet Trump believes that McConnell didn't do enough for him. And ironically, Trump holds a grudge against the Senate minority leader for not wanting to abolish the filibuster. Democrats, during the Biden era, have been complaining that the filibuster is preventing them from getting important legislation passed in the Senate — from a voting rights bill to a commission to study the January 6 insurrection.

Trump said of McConnell, "He's a stupid person. I don't think he's smart enough. I tried to convince Mitch McConnell to get rid of the filibuster, to terminate it, so that we would get everything — and he was a knucklehead, and he didn't do it."

Other Republicans Trump ranted against during the March 31 interview ranged from former House Speaker Paul Ryan to Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah to former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.

The former president told Leonnig and Rucker, "Chris has been very disloyal, but that's OK. I helped Chris Christie a lot. He knows that more than anybody, but I helped him a lot. But he's been disloyal."

President Joe Biden

GOP Furious Over Biden’s Strong Polling Numbers

Reprinted with permission from American Independent

Polling released over the past two days shows both of President Joe Biden's major pieces of legislation — the American Rescue Plan coronavirus relief package and the American Jobs Plan infrastructure bill — are overwhelmingly popular with the American public.

The legislation remains popular even after continued GOP criticism that the plans are "radical" and "socialist" and will increase the national debt.

Now Politico is reporting that moderate Republicans are "seething" over their failure to move Biden's policies to the right. One aide to a GOP lawmaker said, "Everything they support is defined as either Covid relief or infrastructure, and everything they oppose is like … Jim Crow voter suppression and evil. And you constantly just feel like you're in this gaslighting chamber of insanity. But it's working."

A look at the polling shows just how badly the GOP's attempts to make Biden's policies unpopular have gone.

A Monmouth University poll released Wednesday found 63 percent of Americans support the coronavirus relief package Biden signed into law, which authorized a round of $1,400 relief checks, extended more generous federal unemployment benefits, and expanded the child tax credit in a manner that some analysts said would help drastically cut child poverty rates.

Monmouth said the rate of support for the relief package is actually now higher than the 62 percent it saw in March, when the bill first passed without a single Republican vote.

The recent polling finds that GOP attacks on Biden's $2.25 trillion American Jobs Plan infrastructure package are also falling flat.

Republicans have slammed the legislation, saying that only a small fraction goes towards infrastructure, and that the mechanism to pay for it — increased taxes on the rich and corporations — is going to hurt the economy.

Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) complained that the plan contained billions in spending for elder care, which she said is not infrastructure.

However, a Politico/Morning Consult poll released on Wednesday found 54 percent of voters believe that caregiving should be considered infrastructure. That poll also found a majority of voters consider funding for child care, public schools, water pipes, internet access, and housing to be infrastructure as well.

The poll found that 57 percent of voters support the American Jobs Plan.

Other recent polls also show that a majority of the public supports the plan, including a New York Times/SurveyMonkey poll released Thursday that found 64 percent of Americans support it.

This is despite Republicans' ongoing attempts to scare the public away.

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) said that increased taxes on corporations and on wealthy Americans — such as himself, with an estimated net worth of $39.2 million as of 2018 — would damage the economy.

"Increasing the corporate tax rate won't pull us out of the COVID recession or set up long-term economic prosperity, but keeping the American corporate tax rate competitive will help businesses recover," Johnson tweeted on April 6.

But a Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday found the plan actually got more popular among Americans when they learned it would be funded by taxes on corporations.

RealClearPolitics reported that the House Republican Study Committee, the largest GOP conference in the chamber, had former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie in to give its members a pep talk on Wednesday on how to successfully vilify Biden's agenda, telling them to call Biden a liar and saying, "When your opponent is in the midst of committing suicide, there is no reason to commit murder. The result is the same."

"We didn't lose the White House because the American people disagree with our ideas and support what [Democrats] are trying to do right now," Christie claimed.

Current polling is pointing in a different direction.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.