A lot is being said about the third presidential debate, including Governor Christie’s response on fantasy football. Enough to pull up his poll number? Chief Political Correspondent Michael Aron joins Michael Hill to discuss what happened and if it’ll give him the boost he needs to stay in the race.
“Most people thought Chris Christie had a good night last night,” Aron said, “along with Marco Rubio, and maybe Ted Cruz. I thought the debate itself was disjointed for the first half hour and then came together. It was on economic policy which can get awfully dense at times, the comparison of tax plans wasn’t all that fascinating.” He says he thinks the most notable moment for Christie was when Jim Cramer brought up that no one from the Wall Street meltdown went to jail. He asked a question regarding General Motors for 124 deaths that happened as a result of a faulty ignition switch.
“As a former prosecutor, do you believe the people responsible for the switch, and the cover up, belong behind bars?” Cramer asked.
“You bet they do, and if I were the prosecutor that’s exactly where they’d be. The fact is that this justice department under this president has been a political justice department. It’s been a justice department that’s decided that they want to pick who the winner and losers are. They like General Motors, so they give them a pass. They don’t like somebody else, like David Petraeus, they prosecute them and send a decorated general to disgrace. It’s a political justice department,” Christie said.
Aron calls that reaction newsworthy because Christie’s “basically accusing Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch of prosecutoral misconduct, because if it’s a political justice department, what does that say of its indictment of U.S. Senator Bob Menendez? Christie has never really commented on that.”
The New York Times called for Gov. Christie to step out of the presidential race, saying “his campaign is nothing more than a vanity project” and, “It must have been rough for those who re-elected him to see him hold forth Wednesday in a debate that centered on the national economy, when he’s been a net failure on the New Jersey economy.”
Aron says The New York Times has not been that kindly towards Chris Christie, as Republicans will argue, up and down the state. “They believe that The Times is just anti-Christie. I have to say that there are many people that watched that debate last night and had a very different reaction than The New York Times. The Times is saying he’s a fraud and he should come home and govern. They didn’t say that Bill Clinton should go back to Arkansas and govern when he was running for president. They didn’t say George W. Bush should go back to Texas, but they are saying that Marco Rubio should go back to the U.S. Senate. It’s an interesting kettle of fish,” he said.
He calls the second best spontaneous moment of the debate one where the moderators asked Jeb Bush about what he thinks about the government regulating fantasy football, and Chris Christie jumps into the conversation.
“Are we talking about getting government involved in fantasy football?” Christie asked. “Wait a second, we have 19 trillion dollars in debt. We have people out of work. We have ISIS and Al Qaeda attacking us and we’re talking about fantasy football. Can we stop? Can we stop? Seriously. How about this? How about we get the government to do what they’re supposed to be doing. Secure our borders, protect our people and support American values and American families. Enough on fantasy football. Let people play, who cares.”
Steve Schmidt, the Republican commentator who ran John McCain’s campaign in 2008 was on MSNBC last night and said that Christie’s star power is back, “so he saw it differently than The New York Times,” Aron said. “The best spontaneous moment of the night for Christie was when John Harwood, who asked about climate change, said to Christie: you’re one of the few that acknowledges climate change, but what would you do about it?”
“What we should do is to be investing in all types of energy, John. All types of energy,” Christie said. When interrupted Christie said, “Do you want to answer, or do you want me to answer? How are we going to do this? Because I got to tell you the truth, even in New Jersey what you’re doing is called rude.”
Aron said he doesn’t expect much to change with Christie’s poll numbers after last night’s performance. “He has been stuck at one, two, three percent. He’s not even guaranteed to make the next debate, which is Nov. 10. He got a lot of good reviews. His campaign put out maybe 30 quotes very positive quotes from commentators around the country, but those poll number have just not moved for him. The field has to be winnowed before those poll numbers rise,” Aron said.