On Sunday, former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie (R) expressed his agreement with Representative Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.) regarding the influence of the far left in President-elect Trump’s victory, highlighting that the most impactful advertisement from the Trump campaign was “Kamala Harris is for they/them, and Donald Trump is for us.”
“Well, he’s absolutely right,” Christie remarked about Torres during a panel discussion on ABC News’s “This Week” with Jonathan Karl, asserting, “because the Democratic Party, from 2017 through 2024, went off the deep end.”
Christie, who previously made a run for the 2024 presidential nomination, criticized the Democratic Party for making statements that he believes alienate a significant portion of the American populace. He specifically pointed to the diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, saying, “the DEI stuff is offensive to a large swath of the American people.”
In the discussion, Christie—who has transitioned from being an ally to a rival of the president-elect—claimed that Democrats have overly focused on issues related to transgender rights and pronouns. He cautioned that this strategy might discourage moderate Democrats and sway them toward the Republican side.
“The most effective ad that the Trump campaign ran in this campaign was, you know, ‘Kamala Harris is for they/them, and Donald Trump is for us,’” Christie noted.
“That’s because most people don’t see themselves as they/them. Yet, the Democrats have spent more time talking about a trans issue, which, quite frankly, is infinitesimal,” he added. Jonathan Karl interjected, suggesting that Republicans, too, had invested significant attention on this matter.
In response, Christie maintained that Republicans were only reacting to the Democrats’ focus on such issues.
Christie’s comments came after Torres, who serves the Bronx, criticized his party in a post-election analysis. He argued that the far left has created the perception that the entire Democratic Party supports unpopular views, such as “Defund the Police.”
“Donald Trump has no greater friend than the far left, which has managed to alienate historic numbers of Latinos, Blacks, Asians, and Jews from the Democratic Party with absurdities like ‘Defund the Police’ or ‘From the River to the Sea’ or ‘Latinx,’” Torres stated in a post on the platform X on Wednesday.
