Joe Scarborough and company spent some time during Wednesday’s “Morning Joe” trashing the New York Times and its reporting on the George Washington Bridge scandal. It’s become something of a recurring theme throughout the show’s largely favorable coverage of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R).
Months after questions surrounding the politically motivated lane closures exploded, Scarborough sized up the White House prospects of his friend, the New Jersey governor.
“Look, this guy is back in play and he’s ahead in a lot of polls,” Scarborough said. “Very fascinating.”
That prompted GOP operative Nicolle Wallace to revisit a February edition of “Morning Joe,” when Scarborough and his cohorts grilled Times reporter Kate Zernike over her story on claims that Christie had contemporaneous knowledge of the lane closures.
“Let me say things that got me in trouble six months ago about Chris Christie, when I said that New York Times reporters were from Mars and Republicans were from Venus,” Wallace said. “So here’s what’s been going down on Venus for the past six months. Nobody ever cared, on Venus, about BridgeGate.”
Wallace said that the allegations that Christie’s staff exacted political retribution against its adversaries endeared the governor to conservative talk radio hosts, while Scarborough contended that the Times’ coverage of the scandal “actually made [Christie] less suspicious on the planet in which Nicolle and I inhabit.”
“Obviously, the longer it goes, obviously the better it looks for Chris Christie. He has Democrats, he’s got certain newspapers that have been obsessing on this,” Scarborough said later in the segment.
“And what Nicolle is explaining to people out there that may be shocked and stunned and deeply saddened and racing to their mother’s basement and getting the Cheetos out … it’s just a helpful explanation for those of you who live on Mars about who actually has a better shot today at getting the Republican nomination.”
“Morning Joe” has been unabashedly pro-Christie territory for the most part, which in turn has made the show home to fierce scrutiny of the Times throughout the bridge scandal.
When Zernike appeared on the program in February, Scarborough repeatedly tried to undermine her reporting.
Zernike was magnanimous after that appearance, saying she believes Scarborough was “genuinely” trying to get to the bottom of the story.
But Scarborough was at it again late last month, ripping the Times for running a front-page story on Christie’s ties a project on the Pulaski Skyway — written by Zernike and two of her colleagues — on the same day the paper’s story on the IRS targeting scandal appeared on A19.
“This is why conservatives don’t trust national newspapers,” Scarborough said at the time, calling the Times’ richly investigated scoop on the skyway project a “joke.”
Margaret Sullivan, the public editor for the Times, later defended the newspaper’s coverage of the IRS scandal, but she conceded that it “was somewhat late in beginning to cover the latest development” surrounding the lost emails of Lois Lerner, the former agency official at the center of the targeting matter.
When “Morning Joe” regular Steve Rattner mentioned the Pulaski Skyway on Wednesday, Scarborough couldn’t contain his mockery.
“Oh, come on,” he said. “Give me a break.”
Despite Scarborough’s sense that the dust has settled and that his pal has emerged unscathed, the investigation into the lane closures remains very much active.
The Wall Street Journal reported this week that U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman has asked the New Jersey legislative committee overseeing the BridgeGate investigation to hold off from calling nine important witnesses to testify, a possible indication that the criminal probe is heating up.
Sources told the Journal that prosecutors don’t want the witnesses, which include some close Christie aides, to testify before the legislative panel before federal investigators get to talk to them.
