Gov. Chris Christie (R-N.J.) may be the elephant in the room, according to TIME magazine this week, but that doesn’t mean he’s staying silent, doubling down on his outspoken criticism of President Barack Obama and his healthcare law.
Following Christie’s decisive win in New Jersey’s gubernatorial election last week, he took a victory lap around the Beltway on Sunday, appearing on morning news shows This Week, Meet the Press, Face the Nation and Fox News Sunday. During his interviews, Christie condemned the Affordable Care Act and Obama’s response to its failed implementation.
“Anybody who’s run anything in their lives could see this coming a mile away,” he told George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s This Week. “That’s why we didn’t do a state exchange. This whole program was going to be a problem, and so that the President’s biggest problem right now is he’s got to tell the truth.”
Christie added that the healthcare program was clearly something that was too big for the government to operate. He said there was a need for Washington politicians to face the reality of the situation, instead of continuing to say there aren’t any fundamental problems with Obamacare.
Despite praising Obama in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, Christie has not held back when it comes to the Affordable Care Act, speaking out less than a month ago in criticism of the POTUS, saying he had lied. Earlier this week, he called for the President to apologize, something Obama did just days later. And on Sunday, the Governor again said the President needed to tell the truth.
“I think Obamcare was a mistake,” Christie told David Gregory on NBC’s Meet the Press. “I’ve said that right from the beginning…The fact of the matter is, the President didn’t tell folks the truth about what was going to happen with their own private insurance policies and what I urged him to do for the last two weeks when I’ve been on the campaign trail is tell people the truth.”
Despite the beckoning of the TV hosts, Christie was refused to address international issues that did not relate to the governing of his state. But he did come down on former Mitt Romney campaign strategist Ted Newton for comments in the newly released book Double Down, by Mark Halperin and John Heilemann.
Newton oversaw Christie’s background check and said the Governor would have been destroyed if he was Romney’s vice presidential nominee. Christie’s past would have disqualified him from the position, Newton said. The Governor wasn’t too worried about that criticism, however.
“All of these issues have been vetted and if I ever run for anything again, they’ll be vetted again,” said Christie. “What Gov. Romney said when he spoke last week was that none of this caused him any pause at all and so I’ll take Mitt Romney’s interpretation of all of this rather than some paid political consultant who is trying to make himself famous in the book.”
And just like foreign issues, Christie refused to speculate on 2016, stressing that he was focused on serving his constituents in New Jersey.
