Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ) said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” that Republicans who heckled President Joe Biden during the State of the Union address made a “big mistake.”
Anchor George Stephanopoulos asked, “The Republican House members, at least some of them, did seem to take the bait on Tuesday night. How big of a mistake was that?”
Christie said, “Big mistake. Look, you don’t want to rise to the bait, and they did. A number of them did. It was a big mistake.”
He continued, “The better response would have been to respond to that with laughter. If you really wanted to respond to the president saying something as ridiculous as the Republicans — because of what one Republican has said, Rick Scott, which was immediately rejected by almost the entire rest of the party. What they should have done was laughed at the president then and moved on.”
Christie added, “The yelling and the screaming stuff, look, I think that’s always bad. It doesn’t get you anywhere, and it gave Joe Biden an opportunity to engage them back in a way that was spontaneous, that I think was probably the best part of his entire speech.”
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