'That’s much different': Christie forced to explain why he backed Trump after rape allegation

Ex-New Jersey governor and 2024 GOP hopeful Chris Christie was confronted during a CBS Face the Nation interview Sunday about his former support of ex-President Donald Trump.

"You know, you said at the debate, and it got a lot of attention that candidates need to stop normalizing Trump's conduct," Face the Nation host Nancy Cordes said to the GOP hopeful. "But you stood by him after he was accused of rape, after he praised Vladimir Putin repeatedly, after he was impeached. Didn't you normalize his conduct for a long time as well?"

Christie replied, "The conduct I'm talking about Nancy is the one that is the greatest threat to our country and the greatest threat to our democracy. And that was standing in front of the cameras from the White House behind the seal of the president on election night and telling people the election was stolen. And for now, three years nearly, continuing to say the same thing with absolutely no proof and no evidence. That's the problem, Nancy, you know, you can have policy disagreements with someone and believe me, I spoke out at the time about the things that I disagreed with Donald Trump on."

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The former governor continued, "That's much different than taking classified documents from the White House and hiding them for 18 months from the government claiming you don't have them when these are some of the biggest secrets that are in our country's arsenal. It's different than undercutting democracy in the way that he was doing so and leading to the right we had on Capitol Hill on January 6. You know, I'm gonna get on that stage and I'm going to tell the truth, regardless of what other people may think that is the truth. And that's why, you know, I urge people to go to chrischristie.com, donate to support the truth, because that's what we're standing up for."

Rolling Stone notes:

After Trump was accused by multiple credible women of sexual assault, Christie supported him. After Trump praised Vladimir Putin and publicly invited the Russians to hack Hillary Clinton's emails, Christie supported him. After Trump was impeached for trying to strong-arm Ukraine into manufacturing dirt on the Biden family, Christie supported him. He endorsed Trump, helped him prepare for debates against Hillary Clinton, ran Trump's presidential transition team, and admitted in his own book that 'very few people were as publicly invested in the success of Donald Trump as I was.' But now, Christie has reversed course and said at Wednesday's GOP primary debate, 'Here's the bottom line, someone's got to stop normalizing this conduct. Whether or not you believe that the criminal charges are right or wrong, the conduct is beneath the office of the president of the United States.'

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CBS News' full transcript of the interview is available at this link. Rolling Stone's report is here (subscription required).