One-time Trump acolyte Chris Christie forcefully denounced former President Donald Trump on Sunday over his false assertion that the vice-president has the legal authority to change election results.
Furthermore, the former New Jersey governor mocked the disgraced ex-president for unintentionally telling the truth and admitting that he wanted the 2020 presidential election overturned on Jan. 6.
In recent days, Trump has increasingly taken aim at former Vice President Mike Pence for bucking Team Trump’s pressure campaign to reject electoral votes when Congress met to certify President Joe Biden’s election victory. Besides falsely claiming Pence could have “overturned the election,” the twice-impeached former president has also urged the Jan. 6 House select committee to probe the ex-veep for not keeping Trump in office
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“The Unselect Committee should be investigating why Nancy Pelosi did such a poor job of overseeing security and why Mike Pence did not send back the votes for recertification or approval, in that it has now been shown that he clearly had the right to do so!” Trump exclaimed in a furious statement last week.
Pence, who confessed last month that he isn’t on speaking terms with Trump, reacted by offering up his most forceful rebuke of Trump yet. “President Trump is wrong,” Pence said at a Federalist Society event last week. “I had no right to overturn the election.”
During Sunday’s broadcast of ABC’s This Week, Christie—who has repeatedly chastised Trump for peddling election lies and inciting rioters to storm the U.S. Capitol—applauded Pence for finally speaking out against Trump’s over-the-top rhetoric.
“I don’t know why it took him so long, but I’m glad that he did,” Christie declared. “Let’s face it. Let's call it what it is. Jan. 6 was a riot that was incited by Donald Trump in an effort to intimidate Mike Pence and the Congress into doing exactly what he said in his own words last week: Overturn the election.”The former federal prosecutor, who is transparently weighing a 2024 presidential run, then pointed out that this was a rare instance where the truth-averse former president was honest for a change. In this case, Trump made it known that he actually lost to Biden and was doing everything possible to keep power.
“He actually told the truth by accident,” he snarked. “He wanted the election to be overturned.”
Christie continued: “Donald Trump did respond to what the vice president said, and I think it’s kind of akin to a kid standing in the corner holding his breath. It’s immature, and it’s beneath the office that he held.”
In a statement on Friday, Trump—who has floated the idea of pardoning Jan. 6 rioters—groused that Pence acted as “an automatic conveyor belt for the Old Crow Mitch McConnell to get Biden elected President as quickly as possible,” dropping his new nickname for the Senate minority leader. “In other words, I was right and everyone knows it,” the ex-president added.
Clinging tightly to Trump, the Republican National Committee recently censured GOP Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger for taking part in the Jan. 6 committee and claimed they were participating in “persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse.” Republican party leaders have since attempted to clarify that language and insisted they were referencing the Capitol rioters, though the resolution itself doesn’t make that distinction.
“From my front-row seat, I did not see a lot of legitimate political discourse,” former Pence chief of staff Marc Short said in response to the RNC on Sunday’s Meet the Press. Short, along with other Pence staffers, have also cooperated with the Jan. 6 committee.
