To Fox, Christie Is A “Lesson In Leadership”

Fox News praised Gov. Chris Christie's handling of the bridge scandal plaguing his administration as a “lesson in leadership” despite the many lingering questions surrounding his office's involvement in the story.

Gov. Christie held a nearly two-hour long press conference on January 9 amidst allegations that a four-day traffic jam in Fort Lee, NJ may have been orchestrated by his administration as political retribution. Christie has denied involvement for months, and the story exploded into a full-blown scandal on January 8 when emails and text messages published by a local paper suggested that Christie's deputy chief of staff Bridget Anne Kelly and a Christie appointee at the Port Authority colluded to close access lanes on the George Washington Bridge to create massive gridlock.

On the January 10 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends, co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck praised Christie's press conference, saying it “really indicated to many what leadership looked like after facing a crisis.”

The Fox hosts went on to argue that the Obama administration could learn a lot from Christie's “brilliant” response:

Not all media was as taken with Christie's performance. In contrast to Fox, The New York Times' editorial board wrote that Christie's press conference left “plenty of questions that Mr. Christie and his aides, current and former, need to answer.” According to The Times, Christie's “version of reality simply does not add up” and that until “full and conclusive investigation can restore public trust” Christie “has zero credibility”:

First, is it plausible that officials as high up as Ms. Kelly and Mr. Christie's top appointees at the Port Authority, which controls the bridge, would decide to seek revenge and create this traffic chaos on their own?

Did Mr. Christie know in December, when Mr. Baroni and Mr. Wildstein resigned, that these two members of his inner circle had taken part in the scheme? Did he ever ask them what happened?

The email documents released on Wednesday were heavily redacted. Why? And when will the full emails be made public?

Why did Mr. Christie insist that the traffic snarl was connected to a “traffic study,” even after Port Authority officials denied there was any such study? Did he try to get the Port Authority to stop its own internal investigation of the problem?

NBC News had similar concerns, reporting that in the press conference Christie did not “resolve the mystery behind the closing of lanes at the George Washington Bridge in September” or why local officials working to investigate the jam “got no help,” listing six “of the most pressing” questions that Christie left unanswered.