New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) on Monday night blasted “absolutists” in Washington, D.C. who can’t work across party lines, singling out President Barack Obama and the GOP for criticism.
“It’s about human relationships, the fact of the matter is nobody in this city talks to each other anymore and if they do talk to each other it’s not civilly. They don’t develop relationships, they don’t develop any sense of trust between each other,” Christie said at the Wall Street Journal’s CEO Council conference, as quoted by ABC News.
Christie blamed Obama, saying the President “has not developed the relationships that are necessary on a personal level on both sides of the aisle,” according to ABC News.
But he also criticized the GOP in particular in regards to the government shutdown. Although Christie said “both sides” deserved blame, he said he believed there were “a number of people in Congress on the Republican side of the aisle who just did not have an end-game strategy.”
In terms of his own relationships with fellow Republicans, Christie said he didn’t need “to do any fence-mending” with members of his own party who doubt his conservative bona fides.
“I’m going be me and if I ever decide to run for anything again and being me isn’t good enough then fine I’ll go home,” he said, as quoted by ABC News. “This isn’t my whole life.”
