Rudy Giuliani (shannon decelle)
The verbal spat between political pals Rudy Giuliani and NJ Gov. Chris Christie over the recent blizzard intensified Wednesday as Christie accused his former mentor of “shooting from the peanut gallery.”
Christie made the charge in an appearance on Fox and Friends Wednesday, after the former New York City mayor publicly chided his protege last week for not curtailing a trip to Disney World with his family during the height of the winter blizzard that hit New York and New Jersey.
“Chris should’ve come back … They elected you governor, they’ve got an emergency, they expect you to be there,” Giuliani said in a TV appearance last week.
“Well, he’s wrong. I mean, he’s wrong,” Christie countered Wednesday. “It’s easy when you are out of office to be shooting from the peanut gallery when you no longer have any responsibility, but I have a responsibility to my family,” he added. “I would have never gone on the trip if we didn’t have a plan in place to be able to clear the snow.
The two pals have attended numerous campaign events together with the former mayor serving as Christie’s most prominent backer during his gubernatorial campaign.
“Yeah, I’m just going to chalk it off to a bad morning for the mayor. Maybe he didn’t have a good breakfast or something like that,” Christie quipped.
Christie stressed that snow removal in New Jersey had gone well during his absence, in contrast to New York City, where Mayor Michael Bloomberg also received his share of criticism for poor snow-removal efforts.
“My point is what matters are results. And what the people of New Jersey voted for me for was not to be on the back of a snow plow. They voted for me to get the job done. And we got the job done.”
“I have great respect for Mayor Giuliani and maybe no bran that morning — I don’t know what the situation was, so we’ll just let it go,” Christie concluded.
It was unclear if the two have spoken face to face about the incident.