and we ve hired a law firm to come in and do that internal investigation. they re working really hard. they re working diligently. and i can t wait for them to be finished so that i can get the full story here. he is curious. so am i. but here is what i m curious about. why didn t governor christie ask a top aide, bridget kelly, when he had the chance, when he fired her? she is the former aide who wrote that it was time for some traffic problems in ft. lee. if he was so curious about all of this, why didn t he ask her? joining me now are susan milligan and msnbc s tor ray. do you find christie s positioning on this peculiar? we re really supposed to
believe that he knew nothing? and david simon who wrote the wire had an excellent post, talking about you don t do this sort of a thing without getting to go to your boss and get that attaboy from your boss. so why would somebody in his office be doing these sorts of things? it s not just what happened with the gwb, right. it s also what happened in hoboken. surely there are others who are letting the attorneys know this happened to me, that happened to me. so it s not just this one gwb portion of it. now, susan, the curious thing to me, let s say the governor is saying he didn t know. but we don t know when he knew. and therefore never took any action. and he then turns around, not knowing what happened or why, fires who did it, never asking them what they did and why. isn t that very strange? wouldn t you at least want to
0 he read it in the wall street journal. here is the article published october 1, several weeks after the closing. but today the wall street journal says christie s own office contradicts that claim. the journal says, quote, mr. christie s administration said over the weekend that one of those articles, a column in the record on september 13 is how mr. christie first learned what was occurring. september 13th, what happened to october 1? in early december, christie said, quote, the first i ever heard of the issue was when it was reported in the press. which i think was in the aftermath of the leaking of mr. foye s e-mail. that e-mail leak happened on october 1. but in january, christie said he learned about the closures before that story with the leaked e-mail. no, i think it was it wasn t pat foye s e-mails, but i think there was an earlier story about that. i don t remember exactly. something about the traffic, yeah. it s not a game of gotcha. it s about getting the fac
and so the idea that we could not confirm people to that bench was simply a farce. and so the very notion that we had to change the rules in order to keep a party from abusing the rules, you know, i think is very unfortunate. but it had to happen and we re seeing the results of that happen now. now, susan, when you look at the president s agenda next year, items include extending long-term jobless benefits, raising the federal minimum wage hike, preventing the massive republican food stamp cuts, and pushing through immigration reform. including a pathway to citizenship. on these key issues, americans are with the president. 57% say increase in equality is bad. 69% support an increase in minimum wage. next year is a midterm election. we re beginning to see some split in the republican party.
we re beginning to see maybe a civil war in the republicans between the moderates and these extremists. will this lead to more progress for the president s agenda, susan? it may. keep in mind that there was also overwhelming support for background checks for gun purchases and that didn t pass either. i do think the progressives on the hill are becoming a bit more emboldened. they did retreat awhile after the 2010 elections. and i think they were kind of not pushing some of these issues that they didn t think they d have the chance of passing. you can make a conservative argument for raising the minimum wage because it basically ends up being a federal taxpayer subsidy to corporations that don t pay people well enough. and they end up being on medicaid. they end up being on benefits and so forth. you can make an argument for raising the minimum wage as well. i think there s more of a possibility for that now than