Latest accusation against Christie dismissed as nonsense by pretty much everyone

Predators who smell blood in the water go in for the kill. Democrats are predators looking to kill their prey, which in this case takes the form of a New Jersey governor they hope to eliminate as a threat to the be-all and end-all of their existence - continued control of the executive branch of the federal government.

But Democrats, often less rational than predatory birds, sometimes wrongly read the political environment to mean that any accusation they level against their target, no matter how preposterously false, will nonetheless be treated in the public discourse as if it is legitimate. That is one of the downsides of having the mainstream media buried so deep in your back pocket. You get clumsy about the truth because you figure it doesn't matter, since they'll just parrot your nonsense regardless. And this leads us to Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer, who apparently figured the atmosphere was right to let loose with a whopper against Chris Christie. After all, he's on the defensive and flailing in the version of reality recognized by pundits and political consultants, so what better time could there be to pile on? Thus, Zimmer said in several interviews over the weekend that she had been told by Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno that Hurricane Sandy relief money would be released to Hoboken only after the city approved a development project "very important to Christie" and backed by Christie ally David Samson, who is also a member of the chairman of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, having been appointed to that position by Christie.

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Zimmer also claimed that Richard Constable III, the commissioner of New Jersey's Department of Community Affairs, had told her the same thing. That would be a pretty serious abuse of the power to distribute storm relief funds if it was true. And the allegations got some media play. But there is one problem: Both of Zimmer's alleged sources say they never told her any such thing. Guadagno told USA Today:

"Mayor Zimmer's version of our conversation is not only false but illogical and does not withstand scrutiny when all of the facts are examined."

A spokesman for Constable also said he never said any such thing to Zimmer. Jennifer Rubin, writing in the Washington Post, says the real scandal here is MSNBC, which has now abandoned all pretense of being a news organization and is operating shamelessly as a propaganda arm of the Democratic Party. They spent the entire weekend covering the "scandal" without a hint of journalists' skepticism about Zimmer's claims. Now they look like fools. Well, they always did, but especially now:

In short, the Hoboken mayor has been all over the place, claiming different things have been for retribution. With no correspondence or other documented communication with the governor, we’re supposed to take a personal diary that could have been written at any point in time as reliable? A professional news operation must be more than simply a bulletin board for partisans. The claim is on its face somewhat ridiculous since the modest-sized town had asked for more than $100 million (!) in funds and got $70 million, according to the statement released by Christie’s office. And to boot, Zimmer made statements last summer, produced by Christie’s office, praising the Sandy relief. She also tweeted this week that she had a meeting with N.J. Transit on related issues and expressed her appreciation. If this is “retribution” every city in New Jersey should be so lucky. Christie’s team then put out a flood of data showing MSNBC’s obsessive coverage and a string of tweets from Zimmer on the New Jersey transit situation. It also set out examples of MSNBC’s cartoonish coverage, including a sort of Democratic ad (!) against Christie. The test for the mainstream media and for medic “critics” (often merely on the prowl for Fox News bias) is whether they find the actual scandal: The MSNBC hit-squad that does not investigate, does not make any pretense of balance or fairness and is nevertheless given legitimacy by other media elites.

The numbers Rubin cites support Guadagno's assertion that Zimmer's claim is not only false but completely illogical. Zimmer's own past statements, as well as the numbers involved, belie her claims. But MSNBC wasn't interested in any of that. It just wanted to help in the take-down of Christie because he is seen as a potential threat to the ascendancy of Hillary Clinton to the presidency. I suspect Zimmer was encouraged to make these allegations by other Democrats who, assessing the environment in the aftermath of Bridgegate, saw an opportunity to pile on in the hope that they could finish Christie off as a viable presidential candidate. Christie's team, to their credit, did not cower in the face of this shamelessness but fought back hard. Good for them. By the way, this is not about touting Christie as necessarily the best choice for the 2016 Republican nomination, nor is it my attempt to make the case to you that he would win if he was nominated. Those are entirely separate discussions. You can waste your time debating that, or whether Christie is an "establishment RINO", in the comment section if you want. My point here is that Democrats and the media like to create an atmosphere of scandal, and having created that atmosphere, pile on a target with as much nonsense as they can come up with so they can create a media narrative that the person in question is "reeling" and has "lost control of the narrative" or whatever in the hope that potential campaign donors will conclude that he is not viable and start putting their money elsewhere. That is all this is. Most likely, nothing will happen to Dawn Zimmer as a result of having peddled this nonsense, except to spend a little time on the defensive because she made the mistake of slandering someone who has no intention of just sitting back and taking it.