What does Chris Christie have to do with his niece’s apparent Level 10 meltdown on a Thanksgiving morning flight? Nothing.
They’re related. That’s the whole story.
There’s no real Christie-specific tie-in where, for example, evidence surfaces that the ex-governor used his influence to help her in some way. He’s not her father, obviously, so whatever went wrong with her upbringing (assuming something did) isn’t his fault.
But the lack of a hard Chris Christie angle undergirding this thing tells you something profound about the Media’s intense interest in the story. Two things in fact:
- Chris Christie still gets clicks. As of Wednesday night, the keywords “christie niece” fetch nearly 200,000 results on Google, about the same amount of hits as you’ll discover if you search “pelosi hammer.” He may not be popular (polling consistently finds him deeply personally unpopular as well as failing to register a pulse in a hypothetical 2024 GOP field). Writing about Christie still gets people clicking even if it’s because they enjoy seeing him shamed. Expect outlets to keep rotating Christie content into their lineups when it’s available.
- Turning on Trump hasn’t bought him any goodwill. It’s been open season on CJC since Bridgegate after an extended Superstorm Sandy PR honeymoon, and his increasingly vocal repudiations of former ally Donald Trump clearly haven’t convinced the legacy outlets to give him a pass for future unflattering coverage. Criticizing your own party and/or its leaders is occasionally the right thing to do, but it’s a mistake to think any level of self-humbling behavior will ever make a Republican worthy of protected status to a Democrat.
