Chris Christie Booed, Then Cheered as He Rips Trump at Conservative Event

Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie elicited a wide range of responses from conservatives at the Faith and Freedom Coalition's "Road to Majority" conference on Friday while speaking about former President Donald Trump.

Christie jumped into the 2024 GOP presidential race earlier this month, joining an already crowded pool of candidates like former Vice President Mike Pence, former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and others. However, Christie has done what many other Republican presidential candidates have hesitated to do. The former Trump ally has taken direct blows at the ex-president, who continues to dominate in the polls as he too is running for president in 2024. Trump remains the GOP frontrunner for the campaign, and when Christie talked about him in a negative light on Friday at the Washington, D.C., event, he was met with a chorus of boos.

Christie explained that he was running for president because Trump had let the nation down.

"He has let us down because he's unwilling to take responsibility for any of the mistakes that were made, any of the faults that he has and any of the things that he's done," he said. "That is not leadership, everybody. That is a failure of leadership."

After criticizing Trump, the crowd erupted by booing Christie, but it didn't deter him.

"You can boo all you want, but here's the thing. Our faith teaches us that people have to take responsibility for what they do. People have to stand up and take accountability for what they do," he said when members of the audience began to applaud him.

A video of the exchange was posted to Twitter on Friday afternoon by user Acyn. As of 3:15 p.m. ET, it has been viewed more than 460,000 times.

So far, 2024 presidential candidates have mostly avoided criticizing Trump or have vocally supported the former president such as Vivek Ramaswamy who pledged to pardon Trump if he wins the 2024 election.

Trump's actions such as growing increasingly combative on social media while also becoming the first president to be indicted by the Department of Justice (DOJ) have divided the Republican Party, although according to a myriad of polls, many conservatives still seem to plan on voting for Trump.

Christie criticized Trump for resorting to calling his opponents names, including the former president's insults against Christie.

"I cannot stand by. As soon as I've started to be critical, after all of that and after he offered me white house chief of staff, now what he does is call me names and belittle me?" Christie said Friday.

The GOP candidate pool has already been ripe with offensive name calling and other criticisms, mostly on behalf of Trump. The former president recently teased Christiefor having a "psychological problem with size" after Christie said that Trump made the country "smaller by dividing us."

Newsweek reached out to Christie's press office and Trump's campaign by email for comment.