UPDATED: 25 JUN 2023 01:06 PM EST
Despite a less-than-warm welcome during the Faith & Freedom Coalition’s annual conference, GOP presidential hopeful Chris Christie said he believes his anti-Trump messaging is resonating with voters.
“Absolutely [there is] evidence it's resonating,” the former New Jersey governor told ABC’s Jonathan Karl on Sunday when asked about his message, pointing to polling he said shows him ahead of other long-shot candidates in New Hampshire.
“I’ve been in the race for less than three weeks and [I am] already in third place in New Hampshire, only four points behind Ron DeSantis, who’s been in the race for a longer time and is supposed to be the co-front-runner,” he said during the interview on ABC’s “This Week.”
Christie, who endorsed then-GOP candidate Donald Trump in February 2016, has long since reversed his view of the former president, carving out a lane in the 2024 GOP primary as Trump’s chief detractor. On Friday, he was met with booing from the crowd at the evangelical conference in Washington after saying that Trump “let us down.”
“Boo all you want,” Christie told the audience, overwhelmingly populated with Trump acolytes, adding that their faith taught that people must “take responsibility for what they do.”
On Sunday, Christie said he had expected to hear some boos from the crowd during his remarks.
“That is predominantly a Trump crowd,” Christie said. “But they need to hear the truth, too.”
Christie also attacked the former president for remarks he made at the conference Saturday about the legal challenges he currently faces, telling the audience, “I’m being indicted for you.”
“I don't know," Christie said, “how it benefited the American people for him to take highly sensitive intelligence and secret documents out of the White House, to stonewall the government on returning them, for over a year and a half, to subject himself to a raid by the FBI, even though they asked him voluntarily to return this stuff, and to then be subject to an indictment which is obviously going to be one of great trouble for the country because no one wants to see this happen."
He added: “Donald Trump says that's for us? I mean, it's absurd.”
