Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) criticized former President Trump for his response to the jury verdict this week in the E. Jean Carroll case that found Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation.
“His response yesterday to me was ridiculous, that he didn’t even know the woman. I mean, you know, how many coincidences are we going to have here with Donald Trump, Brian?” Christie told Fox News’s Brian Kilmeade in a radio interview Wednesday.
The jury on Tuesday found that Trump sexually abused Carroll in the 1990s and later defamed her over her claims, awarding Carroll $5 million in damages.
Trump wrote on his Truth Social social media platform: “I HAVE NO IDEA WHO THIS WOMAN, WHO MADE A FALSE AND TOTALLY FABRICATED ACCUSATION, IS. HOPEFULLY JUSTICE WILL BE SERVED ON APPEAL!” His campaign has vowed to appeal the verdict.
“I was there with him when the Access Hollywood tape came out, and let me tell you something, Brian: He was embarrassed,” Christie told Kilmeade. “He was embarrassed then. He’s tried to change the whole history now, but he was embarrassed then. Look, this kind of conduct is unacceptable for somebody that we call a leader.”
Christie said it wouldn’t be “silver bullet that ends Donald Trump’s candidacy” but said it was “additional weight of evidence.”
Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R), who’s also running for the White House in 2024, called the verdict “another example of the indefensible behavior of Donald Trump,” but other Republican presidential contenders have either avoided the topic or downplayed the verdict.
“It’s just one more instance where — at a time when American families are struggling, when our economy is hurting, when the world seems to become a more dangerous place almost every day — [there’s] just one more story focusing on my former running mate that I know is a great fascination to members of the national media, but I just don’t think is where the American people are focused,” former Vice President Mike Pence, a presumed White House candidate, told NBC News Tuesday.
Entrepreneur and 2024 contender Vivek Ramaswamy said that the verdict was “just another part of the establishment’s anaphylactic response against its chief political allergen: Donald Trump.”
Still, the verdict is not helpful for Trump, who was separately indicted in a probe by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D) earlier this year. Several other probes by the Justice Department and Georgia’s Fulton County are also conducting investigations that involve the former president.