By Michael Aron
Chief Political Correspondent
Gov. Chris Christie held one of his wide-open news conferences today.
Among the first topics was the Khan family and Donald Trump’s unsympathetic reaction to their speech about losing their son in Iraq.
“I’m a father and I cannot imagine the pain of losing a child under any circumstances. And for Mr. and Mrs. Khan the pain of losing their son while defending our country is unfathomable and I think it gives them the right to say whatever they want. Whether they’re right or wrong, they have the right to say whatever it is they want. We need to honor their sacrifice for our country and we need to honor their son’s sacrifice for our country and a focus on anything other than that, to me, is missing the point,” Christie said.
Christie declined to discuss Trump’s criticism of the Khans.
That’s between him and Trump, he said.
“You’re not going to find me being critical of Mr. and Mrs. Khan no matter what they do, even if I may disagree with any one particular statement they might make,” Christie said.
Another topic was the hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee released publicly by WikiLeaks.
It has emerged that two emails this summer from the DNC to Democratic Sen. Loretta Weinberg contained anti-Christie talking points.
Christie suspects the DNC was coordinating with Weinberg and Democratic Assemblyman John Wisniewski as far back as the Bridgegate legislative hearings that they chaired.
“I think there has to be a full investigation of this. I think that Sen. Weinberg and Assemblyman Wisniewski should either voluntarily turn over all of their emails with the DNC, beginning with the time that they began investigating the bridge matter. If they don’t do it voluntarily, they should be compelled to turn them over. And if, in fact, they used state resources to advance the DNC political agenda, I believe that they should be fully investigated for that and if appropriate, they should be charged. I think it’s completely outrageous. I think Sen. Weinberg gets a free pass from you people day after day after day after day,” he said.
Senate President Steve Sweeney responded this afternoon.
“You know, Loretta Weinberg is the most honorable, honest person I’ve met. In fact, she’s fought for open government. She’s the ethical voice of the Senate,” Sweeney said.
Christie’s remarks came at a press conference he called to highlight the PARCC test results for New Jersey public schools.
He said the tests showed student improvement in math and language arts this past year and that, more importantly, participation rates were much higher.
“There was a lot of hysteria, as you all remember, last year. People calling upon me to cancel the PARCC test, to not administer them any more and what I said was we have to have patience about this. Leadership is about, in some respects, taking the heat you need to take when something’s not popular to give it the amount of time to be shown to be the kind of effective tool that Commissioner Hespe convinced me, along with his staff, that this would be,” Christie said.
Of the snarled Transportation Trust Fund issue, he was asked what’s the scenario for getting out of it?
“The scenario to get out of it is that people have to get into a room to negotiate and everybody’s going to have to give a little,” he said.
And he said he’s working on it.
“I spoke with the Senate president yesterday, I spoke with the Senate president again today, I spoke with the speaker today. We’ll get there, we’ll get there. That’s why I put out the statement I put out yesterday which is, I want to get this done. I’m the first governor in 27 years who said they’re willing to entertain a gas tax increase. That’s not nothing, Michael, as you know,” Christie said.