GOP presidential candidate Chris Christie, left, and Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows.
AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty
Chris Christie criticized Maine’s recent decision to remove Trump from the 2024 GOP primary ballot.The ex-NJ governor said during a CNN interview that Trump’s political fate should rest with voters.Christie said the move by Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows was “not good for our democracy.”
GOP presidential candidate Chris Christie on Friday criticized the decision by Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows to remove former President Donald Trump from the state’s GOP primary ballot, arguing that the move turns the ex-president into a “martyr.”
Christie, a onetime political ally of Trump who has become one of the former president’s sharpest GOP critics, insisted during a CNN interview that the ex-president’s political fate should rest in the hands of voters.
“It makes him a martyr,” Christie said of Maine’s decision. “You know, he’s very good at playing ‘Poor me, poor me,’ he’s always complaining. The poor billionaire from New York who’s spending everybody else’s money to pay his legal fees.”
“This should be decided by the voters of the United States,” he continued. “It should not be decided by courts.”
Bellows, a Democrat, ruled that Trump is ineligible to appear on the ballot due to his conduct before and during the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021, with the secretary of state on Thursday citing the 14th Amendment in her 34-page decision.
“I conclude … that the record establishes that Mr. Trump, over the course of several months and culminating on January 6, 2021, used a false narrative of election fraud to inflame his supporters and direct them to the Capitol to prevent certification of the 2020 election and the peaceful transfer of power,” she wrote. “I likewise conclude that Mr. Trump was aware of the likelihood for violence and at least initially supported its use given he both encouraged it with incendiary rhetoric and took no timely action to stop it.”
In her decision, Bellows referenced Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which was also cited in the recent decision by the Colorado Supreme Court to remove Trump from that state’s GOP primary ballot. Contained in Section 3 is the wording that anyone who has “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the US Constitution cannot hold office.
Christie during his Friday interview reiterated his belief that Trump’s political future should be decided by voters at the ballot box.
“While there may be — people may think there’s a justification for doing this, it’s not good for our democracy,” the former New Jersey governor said of Maine’s decision. “In the end, Donald Trump should be defeated by the voters at the polls and defeated by someone like me, who is willing to tell the truth about him. That’s the way we defeat him.”
Bellows paused her decision to allow for appeals to play out in court, so Trump may still appear on the Maine ballot next year.
The Trump campaign, which will appeal the decision, came out swinging against Bellows.
“We are witnessing, in real-time, the attempted theft of an election and the disenfranchisement of the American voter,” Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said in a statement. “Make no mistake, these partisan election interference efforts are a hostile assault on American democracy.”