Rachel Maddow is a genius!
On today's Rachel Maddow show, Ms. Maddow came up with totally different reason for why the bridge was closed and to whom the "retaliation" was actually aimed. To cut to the chase, she alludes to the state senate majority leader, Loretta Weinberg (D), whose district includes Fort Lee, as the real target of the Fort Lee fiasco for refusing to confirm Chris Christie's state supreme court nominees. In fact, Mr. Christie referred to Sen. Weinberg and fellow Democrat senators as animals during a press conference about the supreme court fight. And the date of this press conference was the day before the now infamous email from Deputy Chief of Staff Bridget Anne Kelly 'Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee'.
This timeline makes much more sense than the bridge action action being a retaliation for a non endorsement. According to the dates on the emails, the retaliation was initiated in August and executed in September even though the election wasn't until November. Furthermore, the mayor of Fort Lee has said he doesn't recall even been asked explicitly for an endorsement of Chris Christie.
So if, Rachel's scenario is correct, then today's episode where Gov. Christie held a two hour press conference to say he knew nothing about a retaliation planned against the mayor of Fort Lee would have been accurate and totally off point.
Over the next few days, people will pick over the transcript of Chris Christie's presser and piece of it will tie back to Rachel's theory as it becomes the focus in the days to come. The one inconsistency I found is that the Governor said he only learned about the emails yesterday and was blindsided and shocked by the content and tone. So if he only learned about it yesterday, why did the governor have two sleepless nights. What kept him up the night before the emails broke???
Here is the link to the full transcript of today's news conference with Gov. Chris Christie from the Washington Post.