New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) steered clear of the blame game surrounding the fatal shooting of two New York City police officers in a Monday night interview with local TV station NJTV.
Anchor Steve Adubato asked Christie whether he agreed with former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s (R) view that anti-police brutality protests, which Giuliani said leaders like President Barack Obama and Al Sharpton encouraged, lead to violence.
“Well, I’ll tell you this, one of the things that disturbs me about the entire conversation that we’re having right now is that it seems like lots of people are trying to score political points here,” Christie replied. “And what I’m thinking about as we sit three days away from Christmas are those two families of those two police officers who will not have them at their dinner table at Christmastime.”
Finger-pointing ensued immediately after Ismaaiyl Brinsley, a man who authorities said was angered by the police chokehold death of Eric Garner, shot his ex-girlfriend and NYPD officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu on Saturday. Local police unions went as far as saying Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) had “blood on his hands.”
But like de Blasio, who called for a halt to protests and political debate until Ramos and Liu could be laid to rest, Christie opted to set his opinions aside for another day.
“There’s plenty of time for us to discuss it but, I’m not going to be someone who’s going to participate in this at the moment,” he told Adubato. “I’d rather allow these police officers to be laid to rest, let these families grieve and have all of us as a society think about what that means.”
