Misstatements have been central to Mr. Christie’s worst public stumbles — about how the state managed to miss out on a $400 million education grant last year, for example, and whether he was in touch enough while he was in Florida during the blizzard in December — and his rare admissions that he was wrong...That's our Chris: never wrong and always right...and he'll rip your face off if you say different. Well he has a lot of face-ripping to get to, given the volume of wrongness he's generated over his brief tenure.
Some overstatements have worked their way into the governor’s routine public comments, like a claim that he balanced the budget last year without raising taxes; in truth, he cut deeply into tax credits for the elderly and the poor...
When New Jersey narrowly lost $400 million in the federal Education Department’s Race to the Top competition last summer because of missing data in its application, Mr. Christie held a news conference blaming “bureaucrats in Washington” and said state officials had tried to supply the missing numbers at a hearing. It did not take long for the Obama administration to release a recording showing that, in reality, federal officials had requested the information at the hearing, and the New Jersey team had not had it.
Mr. Christie fired Bret D. Schundler, his education commissioner at the time, accusing him of lying about the hearing. But Mr. Schundler said he had warned the governor before the news conference that what he was about to tell reporters was false...
A few months later, in November, when the Assembly speaker, Sheila Y. Oliver, a Democrat, and the governor were sparring over pension issues, she said she had requested a meeting with the governor. Mr. Christie called that “a lie.” Ms. Oliver’s office promptly produced text messages from the Assembly staff making the request...
After the record snowfall in December, Mr. Christie defended his decision to stay on vacation in Florida with his family, saying that he had spoken with the acting governor, Stephen M. Sweeney, during the storm. When Mr. Sweeney, a Democrat and the State Senate president, said they had not talked, the governor attributed his own misstatement to lack of sleep.
And why is this suddenly a story? Where was the media when he first tossed out all these lies? I'll tell you: sitting in the audience with stars in their eyes, all gaga over a public official whose rude, crude, bullying behavior made for great infotainment, and writing about his "style", as though he had any; buying into groundless agitprop about Christie's supposed popularity. The fact that he has been ripping out the garden along with the weeds hasn't been nearly as fun to cover, has it? Lots better to play videos showing him intimidating working people and turning the state police into his personal goon squad for bouncing constituents out of public meetings. The man is a liar and a hypocrite, and his cruelty is like catnip to the kept press.
