Former New Jersey Governor and potential candidate for the GOP nomination for president, Chris Christie said on Sunday that Republicans made a “big mistake” by heckling President Joe Biden during his State of the Union address.
Republicans repeatedly heckled Biden during his speech on Tuesday to protest his administration’s approach to several top issues including immigration, spending and the debt ceiling.
However, it was the portion of Biden’s speech about Social Security and Medicare that drew one of the strongest protest from Republicans as the president rightfully pointed out that some Republicans want Medicare and Social Security to sunset every five years.
“Big mistake. Look, you know, you don’t want to — you don’t want to rise to the bait, and they did, a number of them did, and it was a big mistake,” Christie told ABC ‘This Week’ host George Stephanopoulos.
“The better response would have been to respond to that with laughter,” Christie said. “If you really wanted to respond to the president saying something as ridiculous as the Republicans —because of what one Republican said, Rick Scott, which was immediately rejected by almost the entire rest of the party—what they should have done was just laughed at the president then, and moved on.”
Biden took advantage of Republicans’ loud dissent to extract a promise from them to not touch Social Security and Medicare despite some Republicans saying otherwise.
“The yelling and the screaming stuff, look, I think that’s always bad,” Christie said on Sunday. “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.”
[Image by John Locher/AP]
