Chris Christie: Ben Carson Should Answer Media Questions About His Biography

Republican presidential candidate and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, speaks at the Growth
Steve Pope/Getty Images

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie thinks that the questions being asked about Ben Carson’s biography are legitimate, and says the doctor should answer the questions being raised by the mainstream media.

“We’re all responsible for our own personal stories,” Christie said in an interview with CNN’s Chris Cuomo this morning. “It is, of course, his burden.”

Cuomo seemed eager to defend his network and other journalistic outlets for investigating Carson’s biography and trying to verify details of the unlikely frontrunner’s dynamic personal story.

Carson has angrily denounced the media for digging into his biography. “I mean this is just stupid, and I mean if our media is no better than investigating than that, it’s sick,” he said on Sunday to reporters. 

But Christie appeared to side with the media, agreeing that Carson should answer their questions.

“Come out and tell us exactly what went on,” Christie said, but admitted that the stories themselves weren’t necessarily important to the presidential race, for example, whether or not Carson actually stabbed someone when he was a teenager.

“The stories themselves do not matter, whether they’re truthful or not does matter,” he said. “He’s got the responsibility for it, it’s his responsibility because he put the story out there in the first place so he has the responsibility to back it up.”

Christie pointed out that Carson was beginning to face the same scrutiny from the media that other candidates had already had experienced – especially the blistering heat he got over his own “Bridgegate” story in New Jersey.

“I heard him this morning say he’s been more scrutinized than anybody in the race,” Christie said. “Is he kidding?”

Christie added that if Carson answered the questions about his biography the story would go away.

“If he does, believe me, we’ll move on next week to something else,” he said. “If you don’t, that’s when it lingers.”

But Carson signaled that he had little patience for the media’s questions about his story during his presidential campaign.

“The burden of proof is not going to be on me to corroborate everything I have ever talked about in my life, because once I start down that road, from now until the election, you’re going to be spending your time doing that and we have much more important things to do,” he told reporters on Sunday. 

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