Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie (R) laid into President Joe Biden’s management of the continued spread of COVID-19, calling it “incompetence of a monumental scale.”
Christie joined a panel discussion on Sunday’s broadcast of “This Week,” and he told ABC anchor George Stephanopoulos that Biden’s approach thus far “couldn’t be more wrong.”
“Chris Christie, is the president moving in the right direction?” Stephanopoulos asked.
.@GovChristie criticizes Pres. Biden’s COVID strategy: “To be 22 months into this crisis and to have people waiting online for testing and not be able to get tests after he appropriated $1.9 trillion…is incompetence of a monumental scale.” https://t.co/abzEyuEd2O pic.twitter.com/6W9gxQTXG4
— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) January 9, 2022
“Well, he couldn’t be much more wrong than he’s been of late,” Christie replied. “To be 22 months into this crisis and have people waiting on line for testing and not be able to get tests after he appropriated $1.9 trillion to try to deal with this when he first came into office is incompetence of a monumental scale.”
Christie went on to say that what the Biden Administration needed was a new strategy or a new way to approach the problem — and that the very first thing they should do was to get the testing situation under control.
“One of the ways would be — how about getting competent on testing? Because that’s a key part of the strategy of moving forward here and trying to keep people safe, is to keep people apprised of their status to try to lessen the spread of Omicron, which is obviously a much more contagious strain than some of the other strains that we’ve had, certainly the Delta strain,” Christie explained. “That — you know — so that’s Joe Biden’s first problem.”
“His second problem is that he’s dealing in a situation now where he has set extraordinarily high expectations,” Christie said, pointing to Biden’s oft-repeated campaign promise to “defeat the virus” or “shut down the virus.”
“It was the wrong way to go about this from the beginning,” Christie continued. “He oversold on the vaccines. It was never that the vaccines were going to prevent you from getting COVID. It was going to prevent you from being hospitalized or from dying from COVID. So he set too high an expectation. He’s now not hit that mark. He’s failed on testing. He needs a new story, George, and he needs that fast.”
Fellow panelist — and former Democratic National Committee Chairwoman — Donna Brazile objected, saying that more and more Americans were getting vaccinated every day.
“I think the administration is moving at warp speed, something that President Trump signaled when we started getting these vaccines created,” Brazile said. “So it is important that the American people, along with governors and state public health officials continue to encourage vaccines, boosters for those who are age appropriate to get them, to provide these testing kits that I hope will be delivered to every American. Teach them how to use it so that we can stop the spread of this virus. That is our number one goal.”
Brazile concluded with one more call for people to get vaccinated, adding, “Wear a mask. There is nothing wrong with wearing a mask. Get an appropriate one. And secondly, we have to protect others by getting this vaccine. I am going to continue to stress. Get vaccinated. Get boosted. It won’t harm you. Trust me. Look at me. I’m feeling good.”