Christie Tells Trump It Is Time To 'Move On' From Election Loss

MENDHAM, NJ - What you see is what you get with former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. What he says to someone publicly rarely differs from what he says privately, and that includes his conversations with President Donald Trump after his 2020 election loss to President-elect Joe Biden.

"I've been on the ballot. I've won elections. I've lost elections," Christie told Patch. "It's never ever comfortable to lose an election."

But counseling and criticizing Trump, who Christie counts among his friends for more than two decades, over making baseless allegations of election fraud is something that he is comfortable with.

"I think if you look at me over the course of the last four years I haven't hesitated to say what I think he was wrong about certain things," Christie said. "Going all the way back to Charlottesville and a number of other issues that have come up since that time."

Indeed, back in August of 2017 after President Donald Trump said that "both sides" were responsible for the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, Christie called them a "mistake" at an event in East Rutherford.

“The people who wanted to cause violence in Charlottesville were the neo-Nazis and the white supremacists who came there to cause violence. And the very underpinnings of their philosophy — if you can call it that — is the use of violence based upon bias and prejudice,” Christie said at the time. “And that’s unacceptable in our country.”

Back then, Christie said he would keep the advice he had for Trump to himself. That has changed since the 2020 election.

"I think that the post-election period has been handled very poorly, extremely poorly by his legal team, and, and not well by him either," Christie said. "And I, and I've urged him both privately and publicly to move on from this."

Christie helped prepare Trump for his first debate with President-Elect Joe Biden and has publicly defended Trump repeatedly over the years said last month that the conduct of the president's legal team is a "national embarrassment."

Speaking to ABC News' This Week Sunday host George Stephanopoulos in November, the former Republican governor said if there was evidence of fraud, present it. Thus far, that has not happened.

"What's happened here is, quite frankly, the conduct of the president's legal team has been a national embarrassment," Christie said.

He also called the attempts to bring the case to the Supreme Court "absurd."

"The legal theory put forward by his legal team and by the president is an absurdity," Christie said in an interview with ABC's "This Week" host Martha Raddatz. "And the reason why the Supreme Court didn't take it is because it's an absurd idea to think that any state, or any number of states, no matter how good they are, can challenge another state's right to run the election as they see fit. And also there's no evidence."

Had there been evidence of fraud, Christie said that would be a different story.

"I have not seen any evidence that this election was stolen from the president," Christie said. "And so if there was evidence to that you could bank on the fact that I would be out there fighting for him."

Christie said he felt his relationship with the president might carry some weight with Trump as he dealt with the election aftermath.

"I felt like, you know, somebody like me who's gone through it for 20 years, could have an even greater impact on him to say 'listen, you know, nobody likes to lose but there's no evidence of that,'" he said.

Christie said that his recent battle with COVID-19, which he contracted at the White House, did not make him more likely to call out the president.

"I think I would have done it no matter what," he said.

Read more from Patch's interview with Christie:

• 'No Safe Place:' Christie Urges Masking After COVID-19 Battle
• Christie Tells Trump It Is Time To 'Move On' From Election Loss
• Ex-Gov. Christie Would Have Opened NJ Schools, Dining Amid COVID
• Chris Christie Has 'No Intention' Of Leaving Mendham
• Ex-Gov. Christie Extolls 'Extraordinary' COVID Care In Morristown

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