New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie played superhero Friday to a visiting group of schoolchildren when he squashed a spider that wandered onto his desk.
“Thank you, thank you very much,” Christie says in a video of the incident. “That’s also another fun part of being governor. Any bugs that are on your desk, you’re allowed to kill them and not get in trouble.”
But he did not quite get away with it scot free. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) in a statement portrayed the insect-killing gov as thoughtless, telling Talking Points Memo “he probably did it without thinking.”
“Some people put the spider outside, but spiders are often scary to people, and that can prevent them from pondering their worth,” PETA president Ingrid Newkirk said.
Christie, whose name has been floated as a potential Republican presidential candidate in 2016, said in a tweet that it was his daughter Bridget’s fourth-grade class, which came for a tour and visit of the State House.
“Hope I didn’t embarrass her too much,” he wrote.
It’s unclear who took the video, which shows Christie surrounded by students as the spider makes its appearance. Christie wades through two students to get a look at the arachnid.
“Let’s staple him,” one student suggests.
Christie takes matters into his own hands, smushing the spider as the class giggles and applauds.
It’s not the first time a politician’s bug killing has elicited such a rebuke from PETA. President Obama swatted a fly during a 2009 televised interview, TPM reported, an incident PETA labeled an “executive insect execution.”
“In a nutshell, our position is this: He isn’t the Buddha, he’s a human being, and human beings have a long way to go before they think before they act,” PETA wrote about Obama at the time.
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