Credit: Matt Rourke/AP Photo

New Jersey town hall attendees had been warned: Gov. Chris Christie gives as good as he gets.

And up until today, no one had asked him about the George Washington Bridge lane closure scandal that has consumed his second term.

One brave man took on the challenge - and both he and Christie came out of the exchange relatively unscathed.

After buttering Christie up with a compliment and promising to do his laundry, the questioner finally asked the governor about his handling of the lane closings.

"You look better in person than you do on TV," he told Christie at the Flemington Town Hall today before asking about the closings and the staffer involved in making that decision.

Christie, in response, launched into a lengthy explanation, saying that he thought what his aide Bridget Kelly and others allegedly did was "absolutely unacceptable."

"But don't take from the fact that I said I fired her because she lied, that that means if she had told me the truth. If she had told me the truth, she would have gotten fired too because of what she did," Christie said. "But I never had the chance to hear the truth."

Christie also said he would not presume that what Kelly did was an "illegal act" because of the pending investigation.

"First of all, you're again saying something that I'm not willing to say at this point," Christie said. "Because I'm not willing to prejudge what a prosecutor is going to do. It's inappropriate for me to do that. You as a citizen can clearly come to the conclusion it's an illegal act and it may turn out to have been one."

But the conversation wasn't all tense. It also featured this classic moment.

After the man volunteered to do Christie's dry cleaning and drink a beer with him on Saturdays, to which Christie joking replied: "You wanna get married?"