In his remarks about January 6, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie asserted to CNN that Trump’s false claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen was responsible for the insurrection at the US Capitol.
“I think everything that he was saying from Election Night forward incited people to that level of anger,” said Chris Christie, a high-profile friend, and supporter of Trump told CNN’s Dana Bash in “Being… Chris Christie,” part 2 of Bash’s “Being…” series.
The series will be broadcast in its entirety on Monday at 10 p.m. ET.
“I think people minimize what happened on the 6th by pointing to the speech that he gave on the Ellipse on the 6th,” he told.
Christie, who unsuccessfully ran for president in 2016, said he voted for Trump both in 2016 and in 2020.
He was also a presidential adviser to the then-President, Donald Trump, before last year’s election, assisting him with preparing for presidential debates.
Nevertheless, Christie has strongly criticized Trump’s claim that the 2020 election results were false.
In response to Bash’s question about Trump’s involvement in the insurrection, Christie said that while he believes no individual can be held accountable for others’ acts, he did also believe the rioters did attack the Capitol that day because they believed the election was stolen, a lie Trump propagated.
“I don’t think they would’ve gone there if they thought the election had been fair,” Christie said.
Chris Christie, whose new book titled “Republican Rescue: Saving the Party From Truth Deniers, Conspiracy Theorists, and the Dangerous Policies of Joe Biden” is scheduled for release on Tuesday, has been vocal in recent weeks about what he sees as the future of the Republican Party.
Republicans should listen to him as he says that the only way to continue winning elections in Virginia — where the last state’s governorship was won by the GOP, and New Jersey, where the GOP candidate narrowly lost the state’s governorship — is to put past elections behind them.
Christine said to Bash that he is skeptical as neither he nor Trump would be able to predict whether they would be re-elected in 2024.
“I don’t know that he’s going to run. I don’t know whether I’m going to run,” Christine said.
Though he criticized Trump’s rhetoric, he said he would support him again if he ran in 2024.
“Let’s see who he is and what he says and how he conducts himself,” Christie added.
Chris Christie was among half a dozen potential GOP presidential candidates speaking earlier this month at the Republican Jewish Coalition conference in Las Vegas while setting up their potential campaigns in anticipation of a potential Trump 2024 run.
“We can no longer talk about the past and the past elections — no matter where you stand on that issue, no matter where you stand, it is over,” Christie told a group of influential donors and bundlers of the Republican Party.
“Every minute that we spend talking about 2020 — while we’re wasting time doing that, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Nancy Pelosi, and Chuck Schumer are laying ruin to this country. We better focus on that and take our eyes off the rearview mirror and start looking through the windshield again.”
Their Goal is to just get rid of it
Since January 6, Christie has steadfastly opposed the insurrection.
However, some of his fellow Republicans have shifted their positions in the past month, giving credibility to conspiracy theories or simply remaining quiet.
“I’m confident some of them are” scared of Trump, the former New Jersey governor said.
“Everybody’s accountable for their own statements and conduct.”
However “they fall unto a number of categories,” he said. “Some of them believe him. They want to believe him. Some of them are scared of him. Some of them don’t want to talk about it. They just don’t want to talk about it. They want it to just go away,” Christie said.
“I think that there are lots of Republicans who believe exactly what I believe, but no one’s saying it to them. The only voice they’re hearing right now are voices that say that the election was stolen and that’s just not true. So you need other voices to speak out. So I’m doing it.”
I was Forgotten Cheaply When I had the Virus
During Trump’s preparation last fall, Christie caught Covid-19 while helping Trump with debate prep.
Christie had checked into the hospital shortly after Trump announced his own positive diagnosis.
Because of his asthma, he eventually ended up in the intensive care unit, worried that he would be intubated and would be unable to speak to his kids.
Christie told Bash about his time in the ICU battling Coronavirus after spending seven days there.
He told his wife he wanted first to speak with his family if he was to be intubated beforehand.
“The breathing, being asthmatic, everything was an issue. So I had a conversation with Mary Pat where I said to her, ‘Look, you need to tell the doctors that if they’re going to do it, they need to tell you first because I want to talk to the kids before it happens because a lot of people get intubated and they don’t ever come out of it.’ And I said, ‘I don’t want that to be their last memory of me,’ ” Christie explained.
Despite the outbreak, Christie told Bash the White House did not call him.
“No, no. They never called me,” he said.
Asked about the testing procedures of the then-President, Christie said he was doubtful.
“All of us in the room who entered the White House every day were tested,” Christie said.
“I don’t know what the President’s testing protocol was or wasn’t. He never shared that with us, but to be honest, I never asked him. I assumed he was being tested. Whether that’s true or not, I don’t know.”
“I mean, the President ultimately called me when I went to the hospital,” Christie added.
According to Christie’s new book, Trump asked Christie if he caught Covid from him when he called him at the hospital.
“‘Are you gonna say you got it from me?’ the President asked. ‘I don’t know that I got it from you, sir,’ I said. ‘So I would not say that. No,’ ” Christie writes.
For more information follow our website The East County Gazette.
