GOP presidential candidate Chris Christie said the Republican National Committee’s (RNC) move to prevent a joint appearance with rival Vivek Ramaswamy was a “mistake.”
Christie told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos on “This Week” that former President Trump’s stranglehold on the GOP manifested last week over the RNC’s decision to halt a joint appearance by Christie and Ramaswamy on Fox News.
“It manifested itself this week with the RNC when Vivek Ramaswamy and I wanted to have a one on one conversation on another network where we would have gotten 45 minutes of airtime to talk about really important issues, and the RNC prevented us from doing it because they don’t want to have more pressure put on Donald Trump or anybody else to be speaking out,” he said Sunday.
“More information is better than less,” he continued. “And by trying to restrict how much we can interact with each other, just only on those debate stages, I think it’s a mistake for the party in near term and long term to do that.”
Christie and Ramaswamy appeared separately during “Special Report,” Fox News’s nightly evening newscast, last week after being threatened with a ban from participating in future GOP debates if they appeared jointly on the network. Both candidates expressed their opposition to the move on social media last week, with Christie saying it was “disappointing” and Ramaswamy saying it was a “disgrace.”
Christie said he expressed his concerns to RNC chairwoman Rhonda McDaniel in a conversation last week.
“But let me be clear, George, she made it clear to me if I did that joint conversation with Ramaswamy I would be banned from any future debates that are sponsored by the RNC,” he said.