Former New Jersey Governor and 2024 presidential candidate Chris Christie has accused Democrats of helping to turn Donald Trump into a “martyr,” citing a decision by Maine officials to bar the ex-president from the state primary ballot.

Speaking to CNN on Friday, Christie launched broadsides against his fellow GOP contenders, singling out both Nikki Haley and Trump, but went on to criticize Maine’s decision to blacklist the former leader from ballots – the second state to do so after Colorado.

Trump’s removal from the state ballot “makes him a martyr,” Christie said. “You know, he’s very good at playing ‘Poor me, poor me.’ He’s always complaining. The poor billionaire from New York who’s spending everybody else’s money to pay his legal fees.”

In a 34-page decision published earlier this week, Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, a Democrat, explained that Trump would be disqualified from the state primary race over his comments and actions surrounding the riot at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.

“Over the course of several months and culminating on January 6, 2021, [Trump] used a false narrative of election fraud to inflame his supporters and direct them to the Capitol to prevent certification of the 2020 election and the peaceful transfer of power,” Bellows wrote.

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