Republican presidential candidate Chris Christie on Wednesday criticized Florida Governor Ron DeSantis for recently dodging a question about the January 6, 2021 attack on the United States Capitol.
During a town hall in new hampshire This week, a high school student asked DeSantis if former President Donald Trump’s actions that day “violated the peaceful transfer of power.”
DeSantis, however, circled around the question. He asked the student where he was going to high school, said the 2024 election was “about Biden’s failures” and urged not to “relitigate things that happened two or three years ago.”
“I wasn’t anywhere near Washington that day. I have nothing to do with what happened that day,” she said. “Obviously, I didn’t enjoy seeing, you know, what happened. But we have to get on with these things. We cannot look back and remain stuck in the past.”
Christie strongly criticized DeSantis’s response during a CNN interview Wednesday night
It wasn’t anywhere near Washington. Did he have a TV? Was he alive that day? Did he see what was happening? I mean, that’s one of the most ridiculous responses I’ve heard in this race so far,” Christie said.
“We had members of Congress running for their lives,” he added. “We had people trying to hunt down the Vice President of the United States, yelling, ‘Hang Mike Pence.’ And Donald Trump sat the whole time outside the Oval Office, that little dining room of his, eating a well-done cheeseburger and watching TV and doing nothing to stop what was happening until it got to the point where even he wasn’t there anymore. I could take more. he.”
DeSantis’ presidential campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Shortly after launching his presidential campaign last month, DeSantis said he would consider pardoning those involved in the Capitol attack, including Trump, if elected.
In an appearance on a conservative radio show last month, DeSantis said that on his first day in office, he would have his staff look into the cases of the January 6 rioters, anti-abortion protesters and parents arrested for their crimes. actions at school board meetings, and would be “aggressive” in granting pardons.
“We will use the power of forgiveness, and I will do it from the beginning,” DeSantis said, claiming that the Justice Department and the FBI had been “weaponized” to unequally punish people from “disadvantaged groups.”
Asked if he would consider pardoning Trump if he were charged with federal crimes, DeSantis said that “any instance of unfavorable treatment based on politics or the use of weapons would be included in that review, no matter how small or large.”
