September 5, 2016

When John Dickerson asked Chris Christie about the Trump Foundation's illegal campaign contribution to Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, it was expected that Christie would bluster, and bluster he did.

"I can’t believe, John, that anyone would insult Pam Bondi that way," he huffed. "She’s an outstanding attorney general who has been reelected by the people of Florida. She’s somebody who has been an outstanding law enforcement officer and continues to be."

Well, if Chris Christie says so. But there's no mistake about the fact that she asked for, and received, a $25,000 donation from the Trump Foundation, and subsequently dropped her investigation into Trump University. One might have expected John Dickerson to press on that point. Instead, he allowed Christie to prattle on about the imagined misdeeds of Hillary Clinton.

Lie #1: "But what I will tell you is, we now know that Bill Clinton has taken over $16 million of taxpayer money to help to fund the Clinton Foundation, a foundation that essentially was the person and the group that was screening who would get to see the Secretary of State." First of all, the second part is categorically and provably false. And secondly, that $16 million is just slightly less than George W. Bush has taken, because part of being an ex-President is the funding of IT services. Funny how he missed that.

Lie #2: "If you wrote your multimillion-dollar check to the Clinton Foundation, then you got a visit with the secretary of state. There’s no doubt about what was going on there, John, same way there was no doubt that when Hillary Clinton said she had a private e-mail server for one device, so she could use one device, we now know from the FBI she had 13 devices, one of which was destroyed with a hammer by her staff." Someone should tell Chris Christie that most recommend physical destruction of devices in order to make sure private information is not obtained if those devices are reused. Also, there was no quid pro quo, no matter how strongly Christie insists that there was.

So, we might expect John Dickerson to interject and ask for clarification or at least put some corrective comments on the record, right?

Dickerson responded meekly. "All right, Governor Christie, we have run out of time. Thanks so much for being with us."

Remember when Chuck Todd accidentally mentioned the fact that they don't push back because they'd lose access? Tell me again about who the people selling access are again.

Can you help us out?

For nearly 20 years we have been exposing Washington lies and untangling media deceit, but now Facebook is drowning us in an ocean of right wing lies. Please give a one-time or recurring donation, or buy a year's subscription for an ad-free experience. Thank you.

Discussion

We welcome relevant, respectful comments. Any comments that are sexist or in any other way deemed hateful by our staff will be deleted and constitute grounds for a ban from posting on the site. Please refer to our Terms of Service for information on our posting policy.
Mastodon