Chris Christie has denied claims by Republican rival Marco Rubio that he is a political moderate who once wrote a check to reproductive health organization Planned Parenthood, and supported the nomination by Barack Obama of Sonia Sotomayor to the supreme court.
At the GOP debate in North Charleston, South Carolina, the New Jersey governor said he had supported neither Planned Parenthood nor Sotomayor. The newspapers at the time got it wrong, he said. He repeated this denial on MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Friday morning.
Sotomayor, the court’s first Hispanic justice, came to the high court from a post on the second circuit court of appeals in Manhattan, where she was known for a sympathy with defendants and for her support of criminal justice reform and anti-discrimination initiatives. Her nomination was immediately criticized on the right, by conservatives who accused her of judicial activism.
It appears Christie did endorse Sotomayor, according to a New Jersey statehouse reporter for Gannett:
For clarity's sake, here's Christie statement from 2009 on Sotomayor https://t.co/7pvaSjYvgd pic.twitter.com/2T5Rcz7VMW
— Michael Symons (@MichaelSymons_) January 15, 2016
As for the Planned Parenthood check, the New Jersey Star-Ledger has posted its original article from 1994 in which Christie said: “I support Planned Parenthood privately with my personal contribution and that should be the goal of any such agency, to find private donations.”
Christie on PP in 1994: ''I support Planned Parenthood privately with my personal contribution." https://t.co/5QcLfrnu9q
— Ryan Lizza (@RyanLizza) January 15, 2016
What explanation did Christie come up with to make sense of his contradicting claims? Morning Joe’s Willie Geist reports:
Yep. He says he was misquoted by the Star-Ledger on both Planned Parenthood and Sotomayor. https://t.co/pKzK8PjTxR
— Willie Geist (@WillieGeist) January 15, 2016
