New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) criticized Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) this week for calling the aid package Congress passed in response to Hurricane Sandy in 2013 “filled with unrelated pork.”
Christie said Tuesday evening that New Jersey’s congressional delegation would vote for aid for Texas in the wake of Hurricane Harvey, and that “it would be wrong” for congressional leaders or the White House to ask for cuts to offset the cost of the aid package.
Cruz, whose home state has been battered by Hurricane Harvey, repeated his original criticism of the Sandy relief package on Monday, saying “it’s not right for politicians to exploit a disaster and people who are hurting to pay for their own political wish list.”
MSNBC’s Chris Hayes played a clip of Cruz’s criticism for Christie Tuesday night.
“What was wrong was for Ted Cruz to exploit the disaster for political gain, and that’s what he was doing,” the governor responded.
He called it an “absolute falsehood” that, in Cruz’s words Monday, “two-thirds of that bill had nothing to do with Sandy.”
“Let’s remember what Sen. Cruz was trying to do at the time,” the governor continued. “He was trying to be the most conservative, the most fiscally conservative person in the world. And what I said at the time, as you might recall, is ‘Someday it’s going to come to Texas.’ It just does. If you have a coastal area, whether it’s the Gulf Coast, the Atlantic, the Pacific coast, a disaster is going to come to you, and when it does, I’m going to promise him that New Jersey congresspeople will stand up and do the right thing.”
Cruz responded on CNN Wednesday, saying “You know, I think it’s really sad that there are some politicians that are desperate to get their name in the news and are tossing around all sorts of political insults, with people whose lives are in danger.”
Christie elaborated to CNN’s Chris Cuomo earlier Wednesday: “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. I’m not going to let him get away from it. A lot of the reason why I came on this show is to remind people the past is prologue.”
Christie on Tuesday also criticized Vice President Mike Pence’s stance in 2005, that an aid package for Hurricane Katrina ought to include cuts to other programs, to offset the cost.
“I hope he doesn’t” do that with Harvey aid, Christie said of Pence, who as a congressman during Katrina. “It would be wrong to do that.”
