No, There Was Nothing In Last Night's GOP Debate That Indicated Christie Is Qualified For The Presidency

Is this fat cream puff (in the video above) a serious candidate? Not for any normal person. And, fortunately, most Republican voters agree. Chris Christie is a sleazy, self-serving backroom deal-making hack, not a statesman and not an especially intelligent person. His one contribution to last night's debate was that he did give Rand Paul a good platform to explain why he's utterly unfit for public office, though. So that was good. You may have noticed that to make up for his lack of qualifications for the job, he tried to claim he was the U.S. Attorney for New Jersey during 9/11. (He said he was a federal prosecutor 5 times.) That's just a lie that he tells all the time-- which doesn't make it any less false. PolitiFact:

"I was appointed U.S. attorney by President Bush on Sept. 10, 2001, and the world changed enormously the next day, and that happened in my state," he said.

He said that meant he had unique experience as "the only person on this stage who's actually filed applications under the PATRIOT Act" as well as having "prosecuted and investigated and jailed terrorists in this country after Sept. 11."

His comment started a back-and-forth with Paul, who spent more than 10 hours on the Senate floor in May protesting the PATRIOT Act. Christie characterized Paul’s experience as: "sitting in a subcommittee, just blowing hot air about this...."

Christie’s line about becoming the U.S attorney for New Jersey the day before 9/11 is similar to statements he’s made while campaigning in New Hampshire. We wondered: Is it true?

A few of our PolitiFact readers were quick to point out a report published in the New York Times on Dec. 8, 2001, which said that on the day before-- nearly four months after the terrorist attacks-- President George Bush announced he would nominate Christie as the next U.S. attorney for New Jersey.

The article notes, however, that the nomination had been "expected for months."

Others pointed to a White House press release dated Dec. 7, 2001, saying the president "intends to nominate" Christie as the next U.S. attorney for New Jersey.

That doesn’t appear to jibe with Christie’s claim that he was "appointed" on Sept. 10.

...Christie was officially confirmed by the U.S. senate on Dec. 20, 2001, and sworn into office on Jan. 17, 2002.

Christie unequivocally stated twice that he was appointed on Sept. 10. Given free rein to choose his closing remarks, he circled back to the same story.

"I was appointed United States attorney on September 10, 2001. And I spent the next seven years of my career fighting terrorism and putting terrorists in jail," he said.

As Christie stood on stage, he gave the impression that he took the job as U.S. attorney the day before the terrorist attacks and then he "prosecuted and investigated and jailed terrorists in this country after Sept. 11."

...[W]e rate the statement Mostly False.

This morning, the Drudge readers were pretty unimpressed with New Jersey Pig-Man. He did manage to beat Carly Fiorina by a few votes, but just before sunrise only 6,877 Drudge voters thought Christie had won the debate (2.54%), considerably less than anyone in the first or second tier of candidates. (By way of comparison, Herr Trumpf had 120,147 votes, 44.45% and #2, Cruz, had 71,296 votes, 26.38%.) The Far Man's Jackie Gleason impersonation, apparently only works when he has a woman school teacher to smack around. Maybe it's time for him to stop shirking his job as governor and go back to work in Trenton.

Recent polls, don't show Christie making any headway either. This week's Monmouth poll of national Republican voters shows Christie in a 4-way tie with Fiorina, Huckabee, and Rand Paul with 2%, which is below the margin-of-error so is essentially meaningless. He was down one point (a third of his support) from Monmouth's October poll. And the PPP Iowa Republican survey, released Monday, indicates he's stuck in 6th place-- tied with the other joke-candidates-- at 3%. The Fox poll released for South Carolina last week shows Republicans there aren't buying his line of bullshit either. He's tied with a bunch of other non-entities at 2%. He leads many of the non-entities in one respect, though. When asked who they would never vote for no matter what, Christie, at 9%, is more disliked than Santorum, Gilmore, Pataki, Huckabee and even Fiorina! How about other states with less of a media spotlight?

• Oklahoma- 0%
• Louisiana- 2%
• Michigan- 1%
• Florida- 0%
• Missouri- 1%
• Ohio- 1%
• Nevada- 1%

But Pig Man and his SuperPACs have spent all their money in one state, New Hampshire, where they're making their big play. By primary day they will have spent well over $10,000,000 in New Hampshire. And last week, when CNN released it's latest New Hampshire poll, the Jersey slob had made some headway, up one point to 9%, still not in double digits and still not a serious contender to even compete with Marco Rubio (14%), let alone Herr Trumpf (32%).

He should end this deranged fantasy and go back to work for the people of New Jersey, who pay for all those donuts he's always stuffing into his face. The New York Times clearly had him in mind when they critiqued last night's debate by declaring that, when it came to the Middle East, the candidates' efforts "to demonstrate their skills at analysis and leadership, the politics and history of the region often eluded them... Some candidates had trouble keeping the players straight. Chris Christie, the New Jersey governor, said he would bring reluctant Arab allies into the fight against the Islamic State. 'When I stand across from King Hussein of Jordan, I say to him, "You have a friend again, sir, who will stand with you to fight this fight," he’ll change his mind,' Mr. Christie said. It might be a tough conversation: King Hussein died in 1999; Mr. Christie would be talking with his eldest son, King Abdullah II. He also struggled with the question of how some of the biggest players in the Syrian war got there. 'What’s reckless is inviting Russia into Syria,' he said at one point, apparently referring to Mr. Obama’s observation that if the Russians wanted to get stuck in a quagmire by bombing rebel groups, they should go right ahead. But Russia has been in Syria a lot longer than the United States-- it leased its major military port there, the only one outside of Russian territory, in 1971."