Anthony Weiner Sides With Chris Christie On Tesla's Direct Sales

Chris Christie has already said he doesn't deserve the blame for Tesla not being able to sell cars in New Jersey. And of all people, constantly shamed ex-politician Anthony Weiner agrees with him.

Weiner, who had to take a job writing a column for Business Insider because he couldn't get elected mayor of New York, launched his new column with a defense of Christie and New Jersey's move to ban direct sales of cars, and therefore Teslas. His big point is that Tesla needs to color inside the lines if it wants to succeed in business. And it's all to "protect a purchaser's rights" and make sure states can still regulate.

The way it reads, I don't think he's been following Tesla all that closely. Maybe it's because he sounds happy with his 2005 Ford Escape Hybrid.

Here are some gems from his column:

Along with Tesla, companies like Uber and AirBnB, are trying to do more than upset the established entities in their markets. They're all building businesses on an even tougher bet—that they can get rule makers and legislators to throw out the laws that those same people wrote. In this respect, the Tesla fight is noteworthy only in that it's a cool car.

If you want to be in the business of selling great cars, there may be more productive ways to spend your time than bitching about the laws that the majority have passed and reaffirmed from the time of the Model T.

Let's get past Weiner's love of decorum and proper procedures that he shows off here and remember what the issue is. Tesla is disrupting the auto industry norms because the cars are outside the norms. The way they're being sold goes along with that, as is the service model. Saying Tesla needs to work within laws that were intended to sell Ford's Model T is totally misunderstanding what Tesla's Model S is.

If I were Christie, I wouldn't be pulling any quotes from Weiner anytime soon. Not that he was going to anyway.

Photo: AP