Former Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ), a candidate for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, said Thursday on CNN’s “The Lead” that he was done supporting former President Donald Trump on election night when he claimed the 2020 election had been stolen.
Anchor Jake Tapper said, “Was January 6 and the build up to it, the lies, was that the end of it for you? Because I just wonder, in an alternate universe where Donald Trump accepts he lost to Joe Biden in 2020, spends the next whatever he has, month and a half, talking about the Abraham Accords, talking about Operation Speed Warp, which brought the vaccine, and goers out with dignity, again that is not what happened, but if he had done that would he be cruising to the nomination right now with nobody challenging him really?”
Christie said, “It would be a harder proposition. So for me it was election night. When you stand behind the Seal of the President of the United States in the East Room of the White House and told the American people that the election had been stolen when you have no evidence to support that just for for your own ego and your own feelings that to me is over. You can not undercut our democracy. And everything he did thereafter led to January 6. But January 6 started that night. If he had not said those things that night and continued to say them for the next 70 days, I absolutely we wouldn’t have had January 6.”
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