Political News

Ramin Talaie/Bloomberg via Getty Images(NEW YORK) -- Rick Santorum says his 2008 comments that, “Satan has set his sights on the United States of America” are “not relevant” to the 2012 presidential race, but New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie told ABC's Good Morning America on Wednesday that Santorum is wrong.

“Listen, I think anything you say as a presidential candidate is relevant. It is by definition relevant. You’re asking to be president of the United States. I don’t think [Santorum's] right about that. I think it is relevant what he says. I think people want to make an evaluation, a complete evaluation of anyone who asks to sit in the Oval Office,” Christie said.

Adding to the religious discussion on the campaign trail, on Tuesday, Santorum said he would “defend everything” he says and Mitt Romney said the Obama administration has “fought against religion.”

But Christie doesn’t think a debate over religion is a conversation the Republican Party wants to engage in.

“Do I think it’s the things we should be as a party talking about and emphasizing at the moment?  No,” he said.

“I think the idea of the fighting against religion piece of this goes to more to Obamacare issue and the invasion of Obamacare into maybe some religious freedom issues.  I think that’s an interesting conversation and an important one to have in the context of overall Obamacare and what’s that going to mean for the country if it goes forward after the Supreme Court arguments this spring,” he said.

Christie -- an outspoken supporter of Romney -- partly blamed the former Massachusetts governor’s lack of traction on the Republicans changing the rules from winner takes all to awarding delegates on a proportional basis.

And in his blunt style, Christie outright said Republicans are still asking him to enter the 2012 race, as Politico first reported.

“What I say back to them is I’m supporting Mitt Romney and I’m going to do everything I can to make sure he wins the nomination and is going to become president come January 2013,” he said.

He added, regarding his own rumored 2012 run: “I don’t know how many times I have to say it. The answer is no."

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Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio

Bill Clark/Roll Call(NEW YORK) -- Mitt Romney’s campaign is hoping that when Donald Trump calls, Michiganders will listen.

Trump has recorded a robo-call, paid for by the Romney campaign, which is highly critical of rival presidential candidate Rick Santorum.

“This is Donald Trump and I have to tell you that I’m tired of Rick Santorum pretending that he’s some kind of D.C. outsider,” Trump says on the call.

The Apprentice host dismisses the former Pennsylvania senator as a “career politician” who has, “never had a job in the private sector.”  The real estate mogul accuses Santorum of working as a lobbyist before and after serving in Washington.

“Rick Santorum is completely entrenched in the Washington culture and he has been for decades,” Trump says.

Santorum lobbied for the World Wrestling Federation in the 1980s and worked as a consultant to several companies after he lost his re-election bid to the U.S. Senate in 2006.

Trump, who endorsed Romney in Las Vegas in early February, has not appeared alongside the candidate since then. However, there are fresh signs that the Romney campaign is making strategic use of their celebrity endorser.

Trump joined Romney in New York City last week to make a round of fundraising and he has been hitting the airwaves for the former Massachusetts governor in Michigan.

On the robo-call, which will begin on Wednesday, Trump calls Romney an “outsider in the race” who “knows how to handle” China and OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries).

“He’s a good man, he’s working hard,” Trump says of Romney.  “He will win. You’ve got to give him that chance.”

Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio

Steve Pope/Getty Images(PHOENIX) -- Rick Santorum made a veiled mention Tuesday evening of a controversy that bubbled up after audio of a speech the candidate gave in 2008 in which he said Satan was attacking U.S. institutions in government and religion made its way around the Internet.

“I think the reason we are doing so well is because we are available to the American public, no teleprompters, no speeches … sometimes, I’ve been told that when you don’t read off a teleprompter, they may find a thing or two and say, ‘Oh, he said this and he might mean this,’” Santorum said at a rally in Phoenix.

“And the media complains so much about these structured candidates and how they are all so robotic,” he said.  “And then of course when they have a candidate that doesn’t do any of those things they say, ‘Oh he’s really out there, you have to worry about what he says.’  No you don’t, because I will defend everything I say.”

In the 2008 speech at the conservative Catholic Ave Maria University in Florida, Santorum praised the Catholic Bishop Samuel Aquila for pledging to deny communion to politicians who support abortion rights and said the matter went beyond politics and was a symptom of Satan’s reach in U.S. society.

The story was the lead item on the Drudge Report Tuesday and the candidate was asked about it after the address to about 250 people.

“These are questions that are not relevant to what is being discussed in America today; what we are talking about in America today is trying to get America going,” Santorum said on Tuesday.  “That’s what my speech is about, that’s what we have been talking about in this campaign.  If you want to dig up old speeches of me talking to a religious group, then go right ahead and do so, but I’m going to stay on message and I’m going to talk about things that Americans want to talk about: creating jobs, making our country safe and secure and, yeah, taking on the forces around this world that want to do harm to America.”

Santorum again seemed to mention the issue when he said to the crowd that his campaign “has been about very simple things” and America is a country “that when someone is in trouble, and forces of evil are moving, America would stand up and call evil by its name.”

“Ronald Reagan did that.  He called the Soviet Union an evil empire and the media went wild.  How dare you describe terms like good and evil to regimes?  Because Ronald Reagan told the truth, he didn’t sugarcoat it,” Santorum said.

Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio