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Chris Christie says Joe Biden 'lied' about $2T infrastructure plan, slammed as 'Gov Bridgegate' over NJ scandal

'Chris Christie is the number one person who should not be talking about bridges and leveling with people,' said a user

Former New Jersey governor Chris Christie on Sunday, April 11, slammed President Joe Biden saying the latter’s mega infrastructure-spending proposal is a lie but was in turn roasted on social media where critics targeted him over the ‘Bridgegate’ scandal of 2013. 

Christie, who appeared on ABC News’s ‘This Week’, targeted Biden saying: “You cannot call a $400 billion plan, to force unionization in states, to say that taking care of increasing Medicaid payments in states is infrastructure. This is the care economy. This is care infrastructure. It’s baloney. Lying is not popular. It’s not infrastructure.” He said this while countering the viewpoint that Biden’s proposals are popular and widely supported. 

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When host George Stephanopoulos asked Christie whether he wanted to use “lie”, the latter said: “Let’s just be fair here. If Donald Trump had come out and called a dog a cat, which is what Joe Biden’s doing, we would be outraged by the fact that he’s lying. But with Joe Biden, somehow it’s like, oh well, come on, it’s Joe.”

“Now language does matter. We learned that in the last four years. How you use it and what you say, and I said last week that the president’s not telling the truth, and he’s not telling the truth about the infrastructure package,” Christie added. 

Last month, the Democratic president unveiled his infrastructure plan worth $2 trillion, which includes funding for physical infrastructures like roads and bridges, besides power grid, water management and telecommunications. The bill is currently being debated in Congress. 

Christie, 58, also tweeted later on Sunday to criticize Biden saying: “President Biden needs to level with the American people about the fact that his ‘infrastructure’ package is a $2.25 trillion liberal wish list with only about 25% being spent on traditional infrastructures like roads, bridges, tunnels and rails. Be honest with us Mr. President.” He said this while posting the part of his ABC interview in which he blasted the president. 

Christie faces backlash on Twitter

But Christie, who ran for the presidency in 2016, soon faced a backlash on Twitter where many recalled the ‘Bridgegate’ scandal in which lanes on the New Jersey side of George Washington Bridge into Manhattan were shut, allegedly to teach Mark Sokolich, the Democratic mayor of Fort Lee, a lesson for not backing Christie in the 2013 gubernatorial election. The incident saw a criminal investigation and while Christie’s aides were convicted, he himself was never charged. It was also said that under Christie, New Jersey ranked 49th out of 50 states in private-sector job growth and hence he did not have a right to talk about Biden’s plan. 

"Poor Chris Christie. Does Gov Bridgegate think Biden's playing fast and loose with infrastructure?" said a user while another tweeted, "Under Chris Christie New Jersey ranked 49th out of 50 states in private sector job growth, endured the Bridgegate closure scandal and all of a sudden Donald Trump's casinos $30 million in taxes owed disappeared. I don’t think Chris Christie has room to talk about anything"

Another posted, "- Chris Christie lecturing on "bridges." - Next on the agenda: Christ Christie on "physical fitness." - Closing out the presentation: Chris Christie on "ethics and self-respect." "Chris Christie discussing infrastructure on Sunday news shows. Suddenly he is a bridge expert?" tweeted a user while another added, "Chris Christie is the number one person who should not be talking about bridges and leveling with people." One user said, "No idea why Republicans want to stay with a 1950s level of infrastructure while Europe and Asia are decades ahead of us in their infrastructure. America is crumbling into a dystopian hellscape."

Does Biden infrastructure plan speak less about infrastructure?

But is Biden’s infrastructure plan indeed something that falls short on infrastructure? Fortune magazine carried a report on April 6 in which it cited GOP critics, saying the plan speaks very little about infrastructure. Some Republican members were cited as saying only about five to seven percent of the plan is about roads, bridges and ports. “Only about 5% to 7% of it is roads and bridges and ports and things that you I would say is real infrastructure,” Russell Vought, former president Trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget, said recently.

“Like all humongous-scale legislative efforts, the Biden administration’s new $2.2 trillion infrastructure plan contains surprises—unrelated provisions that are hitching a ride on a juggernaut. In this case they’re not like barnacles on a giant ship. Some of these surprises are surprisingly large,” the Fortune article said. 

It also said that while the media calls Biden’s initiative an infrastructure plan, the administration itself doesn’t. It called it the ‘American Jobs Plan’ and it talks about creating or protecting jobs, especially union jobs. It also cited the administration’s 12,000-word fact sheet describing the plan which “leans heavily on infrastructure” from the beginning. 

The piece then went on to assess the definition of infrastructure. It said if the common perception of infrastructure is taken into account, like construction or betterment of bridges, highways, roads, ports, etc., the Biden plan accounts for only $157 billion or seven percent of the plan’s estimated cost. It then said that the definition of infrastructure could be expanded to include upgrading wastewater and drinking water systems, expanding high-speed broadband Internet service to the entire nation, modernizing electric grid and if all of those are included, then the total stands at $518 billion or 24 percent of the plan’s total expenditure.