No one will ever believe you if you try to convince them of this, but there was once a time when Chris Christie was seen as a bellowing, independent man of some kind of virtue in American politics. Remember when he didn't call Barack Obama a Kenyan usurper and tell him to shove his federal hurricane aid money up his ass despite right wingers demanding he do that? Now Christie has experienced soul death and will defend Donald Trump for saying literally anything, in a desperate bid to be the attorney general in the nuclear wasteland Trump leaves behind.

And right on cue, Christie was on the morning talk show circuit today blathering on about how notorious unapologetic birther Donald Trump didn't even talk about Barack Obama being born in Kenya all that much.

CNN's Jake Tapper asked Christie whether he understood why people might find Trump's embrace of a lunatic conspiracy theory upsetting:



Christie's responses were pretty standard Trump campaign stuff about how actually Hillary Clinton started the conspiracy and how Trump did a great service to the nation by allegedly putting an end to this lunatic conspiracy theory (which Christie had just gotten credit for not believing in). But Christie also decided to try to stretch things even more, suggesting that once Barack Obama released his birth certificate in 2011, Trump dropped the issue. "It's not like he was talking about it on a regular basis," Christie said about Trump's embrace of birtherism.

In one sense, yes, even the New York Times notes that Trump didn't go on TV shows and spew a bunch of crap about Obama's birthplace after the man released his birth certificate, but as Slate shows, Trump still fired off 37 conspiratorial tweets about Obama's birthplace between the time Obama released his birth certificate and 2014.

Wake Up America! See article: "Israeli Science: Obama Birth Certificate is a Fake" http://t.co/f7esUdSz — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 13, 2012

How amazing, the State Health Director who verified copies of Obama’s “birth certificate” died in plane crash today. All others lived — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 12, 2013

Attention all hackers: You are hacking everything else so please hack Obama's college records (destroyed?) and check "place of birth" — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 6, 2014

And of course, even in 2011 when Obama releases his birth certificate, Trump reacted in typically Trump-ian fashion, telling the Times: "I hope it's the right deal. We have to look at it. A lot of people have to look at it. I hope it's true, and the reason I hope it's true is because we have real problems in this country."

But, you know, I'd be willing to forgive Christie for this one maybe. Trump's Twitter feed is such a constant, unyielding avalanche of bullshit that not even his closest, most Wormtongue-esque advisors could possibly know when they were telling the truth or not about Trump's public statements.