With the GOP’s best hope for 2016 under siege, Fox News Channel’s biggest ratings-getter rushed to defend the embattled Chris Christie on Monday.
As Bill O’Reilly sees it, Democrats wouldn’t be investigating the politically motivated lane closures on the George Washington Bridge if Ted Cruz or Rand Paul were at the center of the scandal.
“No question some Democrats are trying to destroy New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie,” O’Reilly said. “That’s because they see him as a threat to Hillary Clinton in 216 (sic) in the presidential race.”
O’Reilly said the scandal is “pretty bad” and that “lots of people were adversely affected by it” — but hey, Christie said he was unaware of the closures and that explanation passes muster in the “No Spin Zone.”
“Fair-minded people should believe him until there is evidence to the contrary,” O’Reilly said.
Fox’s top pundit said that Democrats are fearful because Christie possesses a “fire in the belly” that Mitt Romney lacked in 2012, arguing that Barack Obama won a second term because the GOP’s nominee “refused to take the fight to the President.”
Now Democrats are using Christie’s combative spirit against him, and O’Reilly backed up fellow Fox commentator Brit Hume’s assertion that the governor is just too manly for today’s “feminized atmosphere.”
But after detailing the “politics of destruction” being employed against Christie, O’Reilly provided his explanation for the bridge probe: Neither Paul nor Cruz are feared like Christie.
“The left believes there are not enough committed conservative voters to elect [Paul and Cruz],” O’Reilly said, adding that Christie is “at this point, the biggest threat to the Democratic Party.”
