Read the Goofy Talking Points Chris Christie Is Using to Discredit David Wildstein
By David Weigel, February 1, 2014
Mike Allen calls it "an email to friends and allies obtained by POLITICO." No doubt here that it was obtained by Politico, but this reads awfully like a campaign press release—who shares information with their friends in the form of damage-control talking points?
Also, who writes them this badly? The two-page attack on David Wildstein, which can be read here, starts off OK by pointing out that the New York Times might have oversold Wildstein's attorney's claims in its Friday story, and that it definitely changed its lede. From there, the letter devolves into oddball score-settling.
In David Wildstein's past, people and newspaper accounts have described him as "tumultuous" and someone who "made moves that were not productive."
• As a 16-year-old kid, he sued over a local school board election.
• He was publicly accused by his high school social studies teacher of deceptive behavior.
• He had a controversial tenure as Mayor of Livingston
• He was an anonymous blogger known as Wally Edge
• He had a strange habit of registering web addresses for other people's names without telling themHe was an anonymous blogger? What possible relevance does that have? This reads like Scientology bull-baiting, a bunch of innuendo meant to cast doubts. Oh, one problem: It's mean to sow doubts about a man given a job by Christie. Some of the "damning" facts in the letter are credited to a story titled "Ex-Blogger Is Governor Christie's Eyes, Ears Inside The Port Authority." So what's the spin? This man that the governor trusted with a job came with decades of built-up personality flaws?
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