On CNBC’s Squawk Box on May 21, GOP presidential hopeful Chris Christie argued that the media’s coverage of Hillary Clinton’s political scandals compared to his own was “absurd.”
“If I had come out, the day after the BridgeGate thing was announced, and said ‘by the way, all my emails are on a private server, and I deleted a whole bunch of them, and I destroyed the server, but you need to take my word for it. The emails had nothing to do with the bridge stuff.” Can you even imagine what would the reaction have been?”
He added “I do believe that there’s an absolute bias.”
In the first two days after Hillary's e-mail scandal broke, the broadcast networks (ABC, CBS and NBC) aired a total of 33 minutes and 15 seconds of coverage during the morning and evening news shows – a level which rapidly dwindled as reporters moved on from the story.
In contrast, those same network news programs allotted 88 minutes to Christie's BridgeGate in just the first two days -- a rate of coverage more than twice as intense.
And, 16 months later, journalists continue to pepper Christie with questions about Bridgegate. On April 15, for example, NBC's Matt Lauer asked Christie if his “moment passed” because of BridgeGate. No such questions were asked of Hillary.
[Transcript Follows]
COHOST JOE KERNEN: “When you think about Bridgegate, and the media coverage of Bridgegate, and then just go back the last three months afer Hillary Clinton, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, announced her candidacy, and look at the disclosures that have come out since then, in reference to the amount of time spent on BridgeGate...”
NJ GOVERNOR CHRIS CHRISTIE: “Well, it’s absurd.”
...
COHOST ANDREW ROSS SORKIN: Hold on. I’m sure, you tell me, I’m sure if you were to look at the coverage of the servers over the past three months, relative to BridgeGate at the time, you think BridgeGate was that much?
CHRISTIE: Oh, much more covered. And I think you could go back and objectively look at it, and see that it was. At the time, BridgeGate was outgunning six or seven to one the coverage of the IRS Scandal.”
....
CHRISTIE: If I had come out, the day after the BridgeGate thing was announced, and said ‘by the way, all my emails are on a private server, and I deleted a whole bunch of them, and I destroyed the server, but you need to take my word for it. The emails had nothing to do with the bridge stuff.” Can you even imagine what would the reaction have been?”
