As I wrote below, before Wildstein’s accusations, before this afternoon’s email, I thought Christie was toast. I think’s clear for the reasons I wrote, even if Christie is totally innocent and even if no smoking gun emerges. But I hadn’t sat long enough with the Christie letter to fully digest its implications. This email is purportedly if not from Christie himself then issued in his name and from his closest advisors. On that basis it reads like it’s coming from a person or a team who is way, way further gone than I had realized.
One person said we should see the release of this email as a message to funders. If so, the message seems to be “I’m desperate and losing my mind.”
This email/memo/press release doesn’t read like a methodological takedown. It reads more like something dashed off in a climate of frenzied but impotent rage.
Look at this passage.
It’s genuinely shocking that a sitting governor and presidential aspirant finds himself or his key defenders writing a sentence like this: “He was publicly accused by his high school social studies teacher of deceptive behavior.”
I mean, is that a joke? Or, he’s someone who “made moves that were not productive”?
Seriously, who wrote this?
What’s funny is that many people who know the guy have no trouble saying Wildstein in a brilliantly sleazy guy, someone with a taste for dirty politics and would, as the letter finally says, do and say anything to save David Wildstein. So even as a scorched earth attack it’s a pretty hapless effort. It shouldn’t be hard to find damning things to say about this guy.
In the cited articles, you see some of the inherent difficulties of the situation. Sleazy liar is Gov’s “eyes, ears inside The Port Authority”!
That helps.
It speaks for itself that Wildstein is out to save himself. He is not sitting on a reputation for integrity and truth-telling. So the wisdom of doing anything more than saying Wildstein is trying to save himself and lacks credibility is highly questionable. The end product here reads like it’s coming from a team or a person who is flailing and grasping at straws.
If I’m a Republican power player reading this to a get a read on what’s actually happening, what’s likely to happen next week or next month, I think I come away thinking things are considerably worse than I realized.
