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In the interview, Mr. Christie did not directly fault Mr. Trump, who has been dismissive about mask wearing and said catching the virus was “a blessing from God” after being released from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. Mr. Christie did say he had a false sense of safety by the fact that everyone around the president was required to be tested each day, including everyone in the debate sessions.

“I don’t know who infected me and I don’t know how frequently he was tested,” he said of Mr. Trump. While aides have left the impression publicly that Mr. Trump was tested daily, the president himself has acknowledged he was not.

Mr. Christie said that even at the event for Ms. Barrett on Sept. 26, “I was put in the third row, and what they told us was that everybody in the first three rows had been tested that day and tested negative.”

“I shouldn’t have relied on that,” he said.

Local health officials where Mr. Christie lives in New Jersey called him for contact-tracing purposes, but he said he has never heard from the White House for such a thing.

Extensive shutdowns in the early weeks of the virus made sense, Mr. Christie said. But he argued that a lot has been learned since then, and that what comes next requires leveling with the public about concerns while allowing reopenings as long as measures like mask wearing, social distancing and hand washing are followed.

“I believe we have not treated Americans as adults, who understand truth, sacrifice and responsibility that I know them to be,” he said in the statement, suggesting there’s a path forward. He described the responses to the virus as “governed by our two dominant political and media extremes: those who believe there is nothing to this virus and those alarmists who would continue to close down our country and not trust the common sense of the American people. Both are wrong.”