I have to wonder if there is any amount of mocking of Chris Christie's problems with Bridgegate that CNN's Gloria Borger would consider a bad thing? My guess is no.
When asked by host Brooke Baldwin if the Fallon/Springsteen "Born to Run" parody was going to help Christie, Borger of course agreed and assured the audience that he would laugh it off and "think it's fabulous." Time will tell whether she's right on the poll numbers, but there is no way in hell this one isn't going to leave a mark no matter what face Christie eventually manages to put on in public.
She came up with a completely new angle to minimize just how vindictive this entire debacle was, and on why anyone should believe Christie didn't know about it. His staffers didn't want to tell him about what happened because they didn't want to "bring him bad news." Borger's getting into Republican territory here trying to put a shine on this turd.
BALDWIN: Bruce Springsteen got the '80s look going right there, appearing last night on NBC if you can figure it out and Jimmy Fallon. Gloria Borger, let me bring you in now, our chief political an as quickly as we watched that. We want to know we have that awesome wig. Let me ask you this. Do you think that could help Chris Christie, that jam session?
GLORIA BORGER, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST: Look, Chris Christie, of course, is going to laugh at that and think it's fabulous. He should laugh at it and he's a big Bruce Springsteen fan. So I don't think it hurts them when you enjoy people who are making fun of you and speaking of you, I think that's all to the good.
BALDWIN: OK, let's talk about the new poll. It shows surprisingly little damage to Christie post traffic jam scandal, at least among folks in New Jersey. You see the number, 55 percent still approve of the job he is doing. Quinnipiac University conducted this poll and believe or not, in the wake of this whole scandal, Christie's bully rating is one of the lowest he's had at 45 percent. This is a category adopted just for Chris Christie by these pollsters. That's a word used to describe him many times. So you, Gloria Borger, have this column out today that said that the traffic jam scandal raises real questions about Christie's temperament as it relates to governing. I believe the word you use was petty in your headline. Are you surprised, first of all, when you look at those poll numbers, surprised at that --
BORGER: Look, the numbers have been all over the place and another New Jersey poll said that 44 percent of the people in the state of New Jersey didn't think he had the right temperament to be president. That's a big number. I think people are kind of stepping back from this now. People in New Jersey have been paying a lot of attention to it. People and the rest of the country, not so much and I think he is going to be judged by how he handles this right now -- Brooke.
BALDWIN: To your point yesterday before the "State of the State."
BORGER: That's right. How he can get out of this and whether he does it with good nature and good humor. By the way, what the state legislature turns up, you know, because they are going to be doing a detailed investigation. They are issuing subpoenas. They are going to be looking at a lot of e-mails and the texts. This has to be peeled back.
We don't know all the details. In terms of the temperament issue though, the point is that even though Chris Christie said he knew nothing about this, people in his office were doing this because they thought it would make him happy. When you work for a governor or a senator or a president, you don't like to bring them bad news. You like to do things that please them.
BALDWIN: Well, that didn't work.
BORGER: There is an environment in which they thought this would somehow make him happy.
BALDWIN: Gloria Borger, no, it did not, not at all. A 108 minutes of hearing about that last week. All right, Gloria, thank you very much in Washington. Read Gloria's column, cnn.com/opinion.
