Christie: Maine decision makes Trump a ‘martyr’

Republican presidential candidate and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie criticized the recent decision to kick former President Trump off the Maine primary ballot under the 14th Amendment.

“[I]t makes him a martyr,” Christie said on CNN Friday. “You know, he’s very good at playing ‘Poor me, poor me,’ he’s always complaining. The poor billionaire from New York who’s spending everybody else’s money to pay his legal fees.”

On Thursday, Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows (D) said she had concluded the former president “over the course of several months and culminating on January 6, 2021, used a false narrative of election fraud to inflame his supporters and direct them to the Capitol to prevent certification of the 2020 election and the peaceful transfer of power.” Bellows’ decision made Maine the second state to take such an action, after the Colorado Supreme Court last week via a 4-3 ruling.

“Mr. Trump’s occasional requests that rioters be peaceful and support law enforcement do not immunize his actions,” she said. “A brief call to obey the law does not erase conduct over the course of months, culminating in his speech on the Ellipse. The weight of the evidence makes clear that Mr. Trump was aware of the tinder laid by his multi-month effort to delegitimize a democratic election, and then chose to light a match.”

Trump’s campaign has denounced the decision and called Bellows a “virulent leftist and a hyper-partisan Biden-supporting Democrat.”

“We are witnessing, in real-time, the attempted theft of an election and the disenfranchisement of the American voter,” Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said. “Make no mistake, these partisan election interference efforts are a hostile assault on American democracy.”

Cheung also said the Trump campaign will appeal the ruling.