Chris Christie is back!
The brash, loudmouth, tough-talking New Jersey governor has been pounded to pieces by leftist attacks over the past couple of years.
Now, he’s re-emerged just in time to give MSNBC a piece of his mind in a classic bit of TV that will remind Americans of everything that made Christie such a rising star in the first place.
He was trying to talk a little sense into Nicolle Wallace, once a Republican but now a host on the liberal news network.
Maybe that was his first mistake, as common-sense is in short supply on the cable home of luminaries such as Brian Williams and – until recently – Matt Lauer.
Christie was trying to make a point about how impartial investigators are supposed to… y’know… be impartial.
He was trying to explain the most basic ethical standards that anyone with half a brain – liberal or conservative – could understand.
But he couldn’t get a word in edgewise as Wallace tried to hammer him to score some cheap TV points.
“Were you ever around Donald Trump when he was ever warned about Russia or Russians?” she asked him.
“No,” he said. “Not that I remember, no.”
Apparently, that answer wasn’t good enough.
“Were you ever around Donald Trump with Mike Flynn when they were talking about Russia or Russians?” she asked.
“Who are you?” he shot back. “Do you work for Mueller now? I mean, you know, no!”
Christie kept his calm, and he kept carefully trying to get to his larger point about the very serious allegations of bias against some members of Robert Mueller’s investigative team.
One of them, Andrew Weissmann, attended a party for Hillary Clinton and sent of supportive notes to Sally Yates for defying Trump’s travel ban.
But Wallace kept interrupting him with non-sequiturs.
“Did you ever prosecute Democrats as a U.S. attorney?” she asked.
“Sure,” Christie, a former prosecutor, replied.
“People knew that you were a partisan Republican, did you ever consider recusing yourself?”
Christie pointed out that it’s not the same thing. This isn’t a matter of being a member of a party… it’s a matter of actually being on the record with words that indicate clear bias in a specific investigation.
Despite the interruptions, Christie pressed ahead, trying to bring a little common sense to a network badly lacking in it.
His point – when he was eventually allowed to make it – was that in a politically charged investigation like this one, investigators need the highest level of objectivity.
“You have to not only be Caesar’s wife,” Christie said, referring to the old saw about Caesar’s wife being above suspicion. “You have to appear to be Caesar’s wife.”
This isn’t partisan rambling. This is just the basic standards of government ethics, where you have to avoid not only unethical behavior but even the appearance of it to remain above suspicion.
Certainly, by that standard, several members of the Mueller team has flunked.
But you wouldn’t know it by watching MSNBC.
Watch the video here. Hint: You may not like Christie, but this will have you cheering —
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71sVlsistPg