Trump debate adviser turns tables on president's 'disease': 'You caused this problem'

The Republican insider who helped Donald Trump prepare for two debates in a row said on Wednesday that the president is the one causing a terrible "disease" to eat away at GOP lawmakers' electoral hopes.

Chris Christie, former GOP governor of New Jersey, appeared on MS NOW mid-week to discuss elections and voting. Specifically, he was asked about Trump claiming votes are "rigged" due to mail-in ballots.

Christie said, "Well, he thinks in onerespect, guys that worked forhim then, because we're stillhaving folks who believe thatargue about the 2020 electiontoday, over five years later."

He then added, "And, you know, he also theother thing he did is kind ofinteresting, building off thepoint you were making, Joe, isthat, you know, he says, well,write in votes and these latevotes don't go his way. Let metell you one of the reasonsthey don't go his way, becauseback in 2020, when mail-invoting became more broadlyavailable because of Covid, herepeatedly said over and overagain to his supporters, don'tvote by mail. It's crooked,it's rigged, don't vote by mail.And I can tell you that myselfand other people around himkept saying, don't say that. Alot of your voters are seniorswho are going to be afraid togo out to the poll becausethey're afraid to catch Covid.And so if they won't vote bymail because you say it'scrooked, and the only peoplewho do vote by mail are peoplewho are voting against you,those numbers are going to beeven worse."

Christie further noted Wednesday, "And I think that'sa disease that still hasn'tbeen corrected inside the Republican party, that we stillget smashed as republicans onmail-in voting in part, and Ithink large part because Donald Trump conditioned a largesection of our voters to thinkthat their votes wouldn't becounted. And so what I wouldsay to him on that front is,doctor, heal thyself. You know,you caused a lot of thisproblem, and now you're tryingto fix it by saying, doublingdown on the idea that electionsare going to be rigged andrigged, in part because ofmail-in voting, which just, youknow, doesn't match the facts."