A growing scandal threatening to derail a top 2016 contender would figure to command much of the media’s attention on Wednesday, but Rush Limbaugh knows better.
Limbaugh on Wednesday continued the right-wing tradition of insisting that any coverage of a story unflattering to Republicans is nothing more than an effort to deflect attention from stories unflattering to President Obama.
The latest distraction? The George Washington Bridge scandal currently enveloping New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R).
As Limbaugh sees it, the only reason the press provided extensive coverage of the documents that appear to implicate some Christie officials in the scandal was to shift attention away from former Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ criticism of the Obama administration.
“The left right now is very excited over what we just learned about Governor Christie, because what we’ve just learned about Governor Christie is helping to take the Gates thing off the front page,” Limbaugh said.
Gates’ tough words for the Obama administration will come in a forthcoming memoir that generated plenty of buzz on Wednesday after it was previewed in the New York Times and the Washington Post.
He wrote that Vice President Joe Biden has been “wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades” and recalled that he nearly resigned over Obama’s “lack of appreciation – from the top down – of the uncertainties and unpredictability” with regard to the war in Afghanistan.
But Gates’ memoir was overshadowed on Wednesday, when media outlets — well, most media outlets — shifted their attention to “bridgegate.”
Limbaugh argued that “the media has just glommed onto that like bees in a honeycomb so that they don’t have to talk about the Gates book.”
