It Doesn’t Matter What Republicans Say About Bridgegate

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I gather that the main Republican response to Bridgegate has now been settled. There are two parts to it:

  • Hey, at least Christie came clean with his manly press conference and his decisive firing of Bridget Anne Kelly. That’s more than Obama has ever done.
  • It’s nowhere near as bad as Benghazi or the IRS scandal.

Will this two-pronged counterattack work? It’s obviously pretty puerile, only slightly more sophisticated than your average kindergarten playground comeback, but my guess is that it doesn’t matter. Pretty much any reaction will work if the scandal doesn’t get any worse and no evidence pops up that implicates Christie himself. Conversely, no amount of agit-prop will work if it turns out that Christie knew more about this than he’s letting on. This is a scandal in which the messaging campaign just doesn’t matter. All that matters is what crawls out when more rocks start getting turned over.

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BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

“Lying.” “Disgusting.” “Scum.” “Slime.” “Corrupt.” “Enemy of the people.” Donald Trump has always made clear what he thinks of journalists. And it’s plain now that his administration intends to do everything it can to stop journalists from reporting things they don’t like—which is most things that are true.

No one gets to tell Mother Jones what to publish or not publish, because no one owns our fiercely independent newsroom. But that also means we need to directly raise the resources it takes to keep our journalism alive. There’s only one way for that to happen, and it’s readers like you stepping up. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

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