Chris Christie Is Going To War With MSNBC
Zimmer alleged in an interview with MSNBC's Steve Kornacki that the Christie administration held Sandy relief funds "hostage" as leverage for a development project she said top Christie Administration officials - Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno and Richard Constable, Christie's commissioner of community affairs - pushed her to support.
In a statement Saturday afternoon, Christie spokesman Colin Reed said that the governor and Zimmer have had a good working relationship throughout both of their tenures. But the first part of his statement focused on MSNBC, and how "gleeful" it has been in attacking Christie as controversies have popped up in his administration over the past two weeks.
Reed noted the bizarre ad produced and aired this week by MSNBC host Lawrence O'Donnell, which attacked Christie over the burgeoning scandal involving lane closures on the George Washington Bridge in September.
O'Donnell said that he wrote the ad during Christie's mea culpa press conference last week, and suggested that future opponents could do the same for future attack ads against the presumptive presidential candidate.
Here's the full statement from Reed (emphasis added):
"MSNBC is a partisan network that has been openly hostile to Governor Christie and almost gleeful in their efforts attacking him, even taking the unprecedented step of producing and airing a nearly three-minute attack ad against him this week. Governor Christie and his entire administration have been helping Hoboken get the help they need after Sandy, with the city already having been approved for nearly $70 million dollars in federal aid and is targeted to get even more when the Obama Administration approves the next rounds of funding. The Governor and Mayor Zimmer have had a productive relationship, with Mayor Zimmer even recently saying she's 'very glad' he's been our Governor. It's very clear partisan politics are at play here as Democratic mayors with a political axe to grind come out of the woodwork and try to get their faces on television."
Reed didn't respond to a question about whether Guadagno or Constable spoke with Zimmer about the project.
An MSNBC spokesperson didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.