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Gov. Chris Christie may be a RINO - Republican In Name Only, MSNBC "Morning Joe" host Mika Brzezinski said in Edison Wednesday night.

(Star-Ledger file photo)

EDISON — MSNBC's Mika Brzezinski, one of Gov. Chris Christie's favorite television hosts, says that Christie may be a RINO — Republican In Name Only.

“Unlike many Washington Republicans, Chris Christie does something that needs to be done by more Republicans, and that’s attract independent and Democratic voters,” Brzezinski said at a New Jersey State Chamber of Commerce event Wednesday night. “A lot of people — because he’s done that— in the Republican party call him a RINO. And maybe he is.”

Brzezinski was filling in for her co-host, Joe Scarborough, who had to cancel his appearance at the event at the last minute because of what the chamber said was a breaking news story that required him to "travel out of the New York area." Christie is a frequent guest on their show. He also has a bond with Brzezinski, a Democrat, who released a book about her own struggles with weight around the same time news broke that Christie had undergone weight-loss surgery.

Brzezinski said that Scarborough, who served three terms as a Republican congressman from Florida, is a RINO — and so are many others who have been among the most vocal in attacking the “shutdown politics” going on in Washington. The nation’s capital, where Republicans and Democrats don’t like to talk, should take a lesson from the Garden State, she said.

Christie and “Democratic leaders of this state figure out how to work together,” Brzezinski told the audience of about 300, most of whom raised their hands to say they were Republicans.

“And New Jersey, I think, is better off for it. In my opinion, if Washington ran it’s business they way Chris ran Trenton, they’d be in a lot better place. And right now we’re in dire straights.”

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