Chris Christie has a problem. No, not that.
His problem is that he's in a constant state of denial, brought about by the whole Bridge-gate thing. He's gotten so used to denying things that now he is denying that he will announce his candidacy for the Republican nomination on Tuesday at the high school he attended in Livingston, N.J.
The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and The Washington Post and a slew of other publications tell us he does plan to announce. Even Fox News is reporting that a Tuesday announcement is imminent.
But reports from CNN and others say he's not going to announce.
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie refuted reports that he has made the decision to run for president during a radio interview on Thursday night.
"There's been absolutely no final decision made by me," he said during his monthly "Ask the Governor" radio appearance on NJ101.5. "There's lots of people who speculate lots of things, and I can't be held to account for every bit of speculation that's in the press."
The fact is, Christie has been on a pretty long "denial streak." This is a guy, remember, who even denies
hecklers the right to heckle.
Only one active politician has a comedian’s disposition when it comes to hecklers. Lucky for us, he’s announcing for president next Tuesday. “Sit down and shut up,” Chris Christie told one heckler last fall. When campaigning with Meg Whitman in 2010, he interrupted a heckler who was harassing her, saying, “You want to yell, yell at me.” “Either sit down and keep quiet or get out of here,” Christie told a protester last spring. “We’re done with you.” Just four months ago, after being heckled in Iowa, Christie so cheerfully acknowledged that the jeering was a plus that you almost wonder if the hecklers were planted. “My people follow me everywhere…it’s fabulous,” he said. “I’m magnetic.”
And denies earlier positions.
Gov. Chris Christie's shifting positions on education, immigration reform and other policy issues as he contemplates a run for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination are supplying fodder for critics, who accuse the second-term governor of being a flip-flopper.
And acts as if obvious problems don't exist.
Gov. Chris Christie, a Republican, has said little in recent months about roads and transit even as his own transportation commissioner, Jamie Fox, has forcefully called for revenue for the state’s depleted transportation trust fund. Despite the governor’s relative silence, the troubles of the state’s transportation agencies have emerged as a grinding issue for him, including the scandal involving his appointees to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and the growing backlash over his decision to halt construction of a new rail tunnel under the Hudson River.
There is one thing Christie hasn't denied or said no to, however. No, not that.
It was Sandy relief funds from the federal government.