‘When did compromise become a dirty word?’: Chris Christie knocks debt limit process

Chris Christie is glad House Republicans didn’t get everything they hoped for during the debt limit negotiations, he said Tuesday as he launched his long-shot bid for the GOP presidential nomination.

“Do you think Kevin McCarthy got enough?” an audience member asked during the New Hampshire town hall.

“Well, thank God they didn’t,” the former New Jersey governor replied.

“Governing is about choosing. And governing is about compromise. When did compromise become such a dirty word?” Christie said.

“Look, are there things that I would have done differently? Sure,” Christie added. “But I’m not going to trash Kevin McCarthy over this. He had a responsibility.”

Christie, a Trump-acolyte-turned-enemy, entered into a crowded and growing Republican field on Tuesday, pitching himself in part as a rational, middle-of-the-road option for GOP voters. While discussing the debt negotiations, Christie warned that a government without compromise might as well be “a dictatorship.”

While he was working for Donald Trump, Christie said, the former president once told him not to worry about the national debt. “‘Don’t pay it,’” Christie said Trump told him.

“That’s not leadership,” Christie said.

“Let me tell you what would happen if everybody in this room, me included, if they didn’t” raise the debt ceiling, he said. “The economy would have cratered.”