Speaking Spanish at a campaign event amounts to "pandering" to the Latino community, Republican presidential hopeful Chris Christie claimed during a Fox News interview.

In a thinly veiled attack on his GOP rival Jeb Bush, the New Jersey governor argued that a candidate trying to have it both ways was not the way to capture the Latino demographic considered critical in the 2016 White House.

"I tell you the way you don't do it," Christie said when Fox News host Megyn Kelly quizzed him about how to appeal to Latinos. "You don't do, like, focus-group tested trips to the border, speak Spanish and then, you know, criticize Asians."

Bush, who last week landed himself into hot water by using the term "anchor babies" in reference to the American citizen children of undocumented immigrants, had unsuccessfully tried to dissuade the issue during a Monday trip to the U.S.-Mexico border.

"What I was talking about was the specific case of fraud being committed where there is organized efforts -- and frankly it's more related to Asian people -- coming into our country, having children in that organized effort, taking advantage of a noble concept, which is birthright citizenship," the former Florida governor told reporters in McAllen, Texas.

But far from ending the controversy, the brother of former President George W. Bush and son of former President George H.W. Bush seemed to merely add another constituency to his critics, the newspaper pointed out.

Donald Trump, the current GOP frontrunner, used the opportunity to mock Bush on Twitter, CNN said. "In a clumsy move to get out of his 'anchor babies' dilemma, where he signed that he would not use the term and now uses it, he blamed ASIANS," the real-estate tycoon turned presidential candidate wrote.

Christie, for his part, told Kelly that Americans need to address the future of undocumented immigrants by "having a conversation about how you deal effectively with the people who are in this country."