June 30, 2015

Chris Christie Announces Presidential Bid, Doesn’t Break Internet

The reaction to Christie’s declaration is not overwhelming.

Dennis Van Tine/ZUMA

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On Tuesday morning, Chris Christie, the brash and gruff scandal-tainted governor of New Jersey, announced he was officially entering the GOP race for president. Flanked by his wife Mary Pat Foster and his four kids, Christie hit the stage at his high school alma mater to Bon Jovi’s “We Weren’t Born To Follow,” and he declared, “We must tell each other the truth about the problems we have and the difficulty of the solutions.”

Once upon a time, Christie was widely regarded as a potential leader of the GOP pack; he was a favorite of Republican-leaning billionaires (Koch Brothers and others) and a GOPer who could boast success in a Democratic state. His entry into the contest would have been major news. But after Bridgegate and various economic setbacks in New Jersey, he’s fighting for to be at the top of the second tier. (There are now 14 contenders officially in the race.) A recent poll found that only 4 percent of Republican voters want to see Christie as president. And his announcement hardly set the Internet on fire.

Here’s some of the immediate reaction on Twitter, which was, to tell it like it is, a bit underwhelming:

Ann Coulter

Laura Ingraham

Ted Cruz

Greta Van Susteren

Mark Murray

Nate Silver

Fortune

Deborah Wasserman Schultz

Seton Hall Law

Mashable

Chris Christie has gone from telling people to sit down and shut up to having to ask them for attention.

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DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do things differently in the aftermath of a political crisis: Watergate. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after, and go deep on, stories others don’t. And we’re a nonprofit newsroom because we knew corporations and billionaires would never fund the journalism we do. Our reporting makes a difference in policies and people’s lives changed.

And we need your support like never before to vigorously fight back against the existential threats American democracy and journalism face. We’re running behind our online fundraising targets and urgently need all hands on deck right now. We can’t afford to come up short—we have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

Please help with a donation today if you can—even just a few bucks helps. Not ready to donate but interested in our work? Sign up for our Daily newsletter to stay well-informed—and see what makes our people-powered, not profit-driven, journalism special.

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