On The Last Word Wednesday night, Lawrence O’Donnell officially pronounced Chris Christie “exed out of the veepstakes.”
O'Donnell’s damning verdict on the New Jersey governor came after a horrifying series of New York Times stories on the state’s system of halfway houses, which under Christie were turned over to a private firm. The privatization scheme doesn’t appear to have been a success: Among other troubling details reported by the Times, a mentally disturbed inmate escaped in 2010 and murdered a former girlfriend who had spurned him.
Making things worse for Christie, a close Christie ally who played a key role in his political career has a major financial stake in the firm that was placed in charge of the system.
“This episode of Christie corny capitalism is enough to destroy Christie’s chances of being selected for the Republican vice presidential nomination—if he ever had a chance,” O’Donnell declared, calling the revelations, “the Willie Horton story on steroids.”