New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie says President Donald Trump ‘won’t want to avoid hugs’ during his next trip to Texas, defending the president for not meeting with victims during his first trip.
Christie, who embraced President Obama during Hurricane Sandy in 2005, said the president’s main mission during a brief Tuesday visit was to reassure flood-ravaged residents that they would recover.
He stressed the importance of public officials getting out in public in such situations – and predicted that Trump would be getting in close physical contact with devastated survivors soon.
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie says President Donald Trump ‘won’t want to avoid hugs’ during his next trip to Texas, after an initial trip where Trump met with state and local officials but stayed away from the unfolding catastrophe
‘He didn’t yesterday because he didn’t see the people. I will tell you that when you see those people and I know him, he won’t be able to avoid – and won’t want to avoid – hugging and making people feel better,’ Christie told CNN Wednesday.
‘The fact is yesterday was a competence day,’ Christie explained, referring to Trump’s initial trip.
The White House said Trump didn’t want to go to Houston yet to avoid disrupting recovery efforts. Instead, he flew to Corpus Christie 30 miles away, and to Austin, where he got a briefing with state and local officials and his own cabinet members who came along.
Christie responded to some of Trump’s comments that may have sounded off key to some.
President Donald Trump speaks during a tour of the Texas Department of Public Safety Emergency Operations Center in Austin, Texas, U.S., August 29, 2017
Christie spoke about the importance of optics when a chief executive confronts a natural disaster
A car dealership is covered by Hurricane Harvey floodwaters near Houston, Texas August 29, 2017
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‘What a crowd, what a turnout,’ said to a group of about a thousand people who lined a highway to see him on his visit.
Trump told Texas Gov. Greg Abbott: ‘We won’t say congratulations. We don’t want to do that. We don’t want to congratulate. We’ll congratulate each other when it’s all finished,’ Trump said at another point.
‘I think yesterday he was himself,’ Christie told CNN’s Chris Cuomo, whose father is New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Cuomo observed that Christie is a ‘hug-a-holic’ when asking about the president’s performance meeting with Texans. Trump is famously germaphobic, but learned to shake countless hands during his run for the presidency and time in office.
‘What he wanted to show was the builder’s confidence yesterday. That we’re gonna come down here we’re going to fix it. He said “You’re going to get back on your feet quickly. We’re going to get it all done,” Christie added.
‘Remember the difference here is he wasn’t in Houston. He wasn’t near victims,’ Christie explained.
Christie also took a shot at Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, a former GOP presidential primary rival who blasted ‘pork’ in the Sandy relief package that had been stalled in Congress after the devastating hurricane.
‘I see Sen. Cruz and it’s disgusting to me that he stands in a recovery center with victims standing behind him as a backdrop and he’s still repeating the same reprehensible lies about what happened in Sandy. And it’s unacceptable to me. Absolutely unacceptable,’ said Christie.