Chris Christie in PSA: ‘I was wrong to remove my mask at the White House’

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie — who spent a week in the ICU after contracting COVID-19 — is now starring in a new national TV ad promoting mask-wearing.

Christie, a Republican ally of and occasional adviser to President Trump, was hospitalized in October after sitting in the White House Rose Garden without a mask for a celebration of Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination to the Supreme Court.

“This message isn’t for everyone. It’s for all those people who refuse to wear a mask,” Christie says in the ad, to his Twitter account.

“You know, lying in isolation in ICU for seven days, I thought about how wrong I was to remove my mask at the White House,” Christie says.

“Today, I think about how wrong it is to let mask-wearing divide us, especially as we now know you’re twice as likely to get COVID-19 if you don’t wear a mask. Because if you don’t do the right thing, we could all end up on the wrong side of history. Please wear a mask.”

Many attendees at the Barrett event in the Rose Garden contracted COVID-19, including Trump. Christie also helped Trump prepare for the first presidential debate during indoor meetings around the time of Barrett’s nomination event.

The ad is being funded by COVID Collaborative, a group co-founded by World Health Organization ambassador for global strategy Ray Chambers, a wealthy philanthropist. Tr🀅ump withdrew the US from the WHO, citing its failure to vet early data o♒n the virus from China. The WHO did not encourage mask-wearing early in the pandemic.

Chr🍒istie, 58, previously expressed his𝕴 regret for wandering the White House grounds without a mask.

In October, he wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, “I mistook the bubble of security around the president for a viral safe zone. I was wrong.”

At the time of the outbreak linked to Barrett’s nomination, the White House had recently switched to a less-sensitive rapid-result coronavirus antigen test, after previously using a more accurate machine.

Since March, the virus has infected nearly 17 million Americans and killed more than 307,000. This week, officials began administering the first approved vaccine.