Chris Christie’s presidential campaign said Friday that the New Jersey governor did not lie, but rather misspoke, when he said during a Republican primary debate that he was appointed U.S. attorney the day before 9/11.
Christie made the comment in response to a question from moderator and Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly about national security and mass government surveillance, which would lead to a shouting match between the governor and his longtime adversary Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY).
“I’m the only person on this stage who’s actually filed applications under the Patriot Act, who have gone before the Foreign Intelligence Service Court [sic], who has prosecuted and investigated and jailed terrorists in the country after Sept. 11,” he responded. “I was appointed U.S. attorney by President Bush on Sept. 10, 2001. The world changed enormously the next day and it happened in my state. This is not theoretical to me.”
Journalist Marcy Wheeler was the first to point out that Christie’s timeline was off. While it was widely expected around the time of the 9/11 terror attacks that Bush would appoint Christie as a U.S. attorney, the former President didn’t announce his intention to nominate Christie until December 2001. Christie was confirmed and began work as New Jersey’s top prosecutor in January 2002.
A Christie campaign spokeswoman told NJ.com that Christie had gotten a call from Bush about his intentions to nominate him on the day before 9/11.
“He was making the point that the world changed the next day, so that was the context: The point he was making was that on Sept. 10th, when he got the call (from Bush), it was a very different world than Sept. 11th,” spokeswoman Samantha Smith said, as quoted by NJ.com.
The campaign also denied that Christie’s statement during the debate amounted to a lie.
“Not a liar,” Smith told US News & World Report.
Hey Porky Pig, a lie is a lie is a lie.
Christie didn’t “misspeak.”
He lied.
And then he repeated the lie.
Classic Republican behavior.
Yeah you right. He “mis-spoke.” Twice. On purpose.
Sorry, but he flat-out lied about it and he said more than once last night. So this wasn’t a single lie, but lying, then lying again later in the debate.
Well I am going to suggest that it was not so much a lie as a very convenient collapsing of two symbolic moments into one.
Because the day that Christie actually had his appointment announced was Dec 7, 2001 which is to say Pearl Harbor Day which of course was the occassion of the FIRST sneak mass casualty air attack on this country. And Christie might indeed have thought that was symbolic and just later let the event drift in his own mind from a parallel to an actual.
More cynically he may have just gotten used to telling a more complicated version of this story that maintained the symbolic connection more explicitly and just allowed the story to “improve” over time as he “sharpened” it. This actually happens to people all the time, I myself often tell the story about how the Iraqi attack on the USS Stark and the subsequent shootdown of the Iranian Airbus by the USS Vincennes effected me as an active serving Navy sailor. Until someone managed to point out to me that I got out of the Navy in 1981 and these events happened a decade later. Ooops. But I wasn’t consciously lying, I just projected my feelings as an ex-sailor back on the younger me.
Not to say that Christie is not a despicable turd in general or that he would be above lying outright if it seemed to serve his interest. I just think it is possible that the symbolism of an appointment on Pearl Harbor Day just synchronized itself with the more recent event. Or maybe not.