Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) claimed many high-profile Republicans who heap praise on Donald Trump in public are actually slamming the president in private.

And Christie, a onetime close Trump associate-turned-critic, named one sycophant in particular, which drew gasps from Bill Maher’s “Real Time” audience and a look of surprise from the host himself during the latest episode.

“So many of my fellow party members, especially come up to me, because I say all this stuff out loud, and they, in the green room at ABC, they’ll say, ‘You’re so brave. That’s so great. I totally agree with you. He’s nuts,’” said Christie, who frequently took Trump to task during his own unsuccessful bid to become the GOP’s presidential nominee in the 2024 election.

Christie continued: “And then they go out on camera to be interviewed and they go, ‘The greatest president since Abraham Lincoln.’ And then they come back in the green room, and they say to me, ‘You know, I have to do that but like I don’t really mean it.’ That’s what they say.”

“Like who, specifically?” asked Maher.

Christie shook his head and smiled, before saying there were lots and then naming Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.).

“Whoa,” one person in the audience shouted.

Christie suggested Graham, behind closed doors, says pretty much “what he was saying” when Trump ran for president in 2016 and he was a vocal critic of the then-candidate.

“But I guess if you get invited to play golf, then off you go,” said Christie, noting Graham’s golf games with the president.

Graham, who briefly ran for the GOP nomination in 2016 too, slammed Trump then as a “race-baiting, xenophobic religious bigot” who “doesn’t represent” the GOP. After Trump’s surprise victory, though, Graham became one of his biggest fans — only breaking briefly with him to condemn his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.