Chris Christie: Trump and the Media are in a ‘Death Spiral’ Which ‘Hurts Both of Them’
Former Republican Governor of New Jersey Chris Christie advised President Donald Trump to keep his press briefings short and stop fighting with the media, during an appearance on The View Tuesday.
After being asked by The View co-host Meghan McCain about President Trump’s controversial coronavirus press briefings, Christie said, “I think the press has been in a death spiral that the president participates in, which hurts both of them.”
“I think that the questions are often combative and ‘gotcha’, his responses I think at times are beneath what he should be doing, and I’ve said to him many number of times that his press briefings should be much shorter,” Christie continued. “He should be there for 10 or 15 minutes off the top to deliver the big headlines, answer a few questions, and then leave the rest of it to Vice President Pence and to the folks on his team, the experts on his team.
“I don’t think it helps the president in the long run to be in a hand-to-hand combat with any member of the media, and I think also the media has some measure of responsibility as well for some of the things that they do. So, unfortunately, I think they’re both hurting the situation here,” he argued. “And I think the president should be shorter and I think the media should stick to topics that, you know, are direct and that the people and the audience want to know the answers to.”
Co-host Joy Behar shot back, “So governor, so are you saying that the press should not call him out on his lies? Is that what you’re saying?”
“No, what I’m saying is, Joy, you can’t just isolate one press conference. If you look over the course of the time of this entire crisis, but even go back further to the beginning of the presidency, this has been a very combative relationship between the media and the presidency, and I’m not one of those people who just blames it on one side,” Christie responded. “I think both sides have shown, over the course of this relationship, that they’re both too combative with each other and I don’t think it helps the president for him to act in some of the ways that he acts at times, and I don’t think it helps the credibility of the media to be doing that either.”
“I have a 26-year-old son who yesterday said to us, ‘I can’t watch CNN anymore, I can’t watch MSNBC anymore, and I can’t watch Fox anymore because no one is giving it to me straight,'” he concluded. “Now that’s the view of a millennial 26-year-old, and I think there’s a lot of people in the country who feel that way.”
On Monday, President Trump hijacked the coronavirus press briefing into a campaign against the mainstream media, putting up a sign which read “The Media Minimized the Risk from the Start” on a television screen before playing a compilation of media commentators downplaying the coronavirus before the crisis.
Watch above via ABC.
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