Time Editor Fat Shames Christie: 'He's Obviously a Big Guy'

As John Nolte reported Thursday, Time Magazine has published an insulting, demeaning cover story on New Jersey Governor Chris Christie (R) with the headline “The Elephant in the Room,” an obvious smack at Christie’s girth. 

MSNBC’s Chris Matthews had Time Magazine‘s Executive Editor Michael Duffy on to defend the magazine’s fat-shaming insult. Matthews asked Duffy what he meant by “Elephant in the Room”?

Duffy, whose first book was on the George H. W. Bush presidency entitled, “Marching in Place: The Status Quo Presidency of George Bush,” replied: 

Well, he’s obviously a big guy. He’s obviously a big Republican. But he’s also done a really huge thing here this week. He stood astride the Republican Party and said, ‘Stop. We don’t have to make our whole appeal about narrow base issues.’ And that campaign showed it with the demographics you talked about.

There’s another thing that’s really big about what Christie achieved in the state that hasn’t voted for a Republican two times in a row since 1985. He’s made his campaign, Chris, not really about issues but about sort of the cult of personality. He’s lifted himself beyond politics, into something of a kind of cultural figure here, the way Palin did, the way Clinton did, the way Bush even did at the start and said ‘I’m kind of past politics, I’m bigger than that. I’ll tame it when I get wherever I’m going. He even said it last night, because of who he is-brash, bold, bareknuckled-a different politician than we’ve seen from Republicans in awhile.”

Watch the segment here: