Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has carved out a (so far) unique position in his chase for the Republican nomination for president — he is alone, excepting some frenetic attempts by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, in going straight at the front runner, Donald Trump, and calling the former President unfit to regain the presidency.
This positioning makes Christie an attractive figure to the media, with his pugilistic approach to the divisive Trump creating news while the rest of the GOP remains reluctant to criticize the frontrunner. (Christie, on the contrary, wonders how anybody expects to beat Trump without taking him on.)
As a result of his lone wolf standing, Christie gets far more media attention than anybody else in the race polling in his territory — Christie is at 5%, trailing even former VP Mike Pence, according to a recent NBC News poll. Yet his megaphone is louder than Pence’s or Nikki Haley’s — or any of the other imminent also-rans.
Christie keeps delivering too, recently revealing yet another reason people find him — and the path he’s chosen — compelling. Because Christie is a former Trump insider — he portrayed Hillary Clinton in Trump’s 2016 debate prep — he has credibility when he reports the inside dope on the GOP, saying aloud what others really think but are allegedly too timid or fearful to say.
Here’s what most Republicans know but are afraid to say in public:
— Chris Christie (@GovChristie) July 3, 2023
1. Trump is too self-consumed to ever be an effective president.
2. He’s been a political failure.
It’s time we stop whispering this. We can’t be afraid of him if we want to govern.https://t.co/9LOaL76eT0 pic.twitter.com/56ONW7aJI6
Christie says that “most Republicans” know two things about Trump. First, that he’s too “self-consumed to ever be an effective president” and, second, that he’s a “political failure.”
Christie implies that he knows that’s what Republicans know because that’s what Republicans whisper to him, and he’s urging his GOP colleagues to “stop whispering” and say aloud that Trump isn’t the best face the party can put forward.
Don’t be “afraid,” Christie implores Republicans, insisting that Trump doesn’t “have an army of his own” — perhaps a specious conclusion given what people saw on January 6.
Christie told the Financial Times, in that candid and revealing interview, that he thinks Joe Biden — who he has known for decades — is also unfit. (And there are Biden whispers among Democrats, just as there are Trump whispers among Republicans.)
Biden, Christie says, was “very natural” and “very nice” as a youthful politician, but Christie asserts Biden is now too old for the job he currently occupies.
“In his younger years, [Biden] was a very natural, gregarious retail politician and I think he’s a very nice person,” Christie told FT. “I never had any interactions with Joe Biden that would make me feel any differently about him.”
The praise, though, was heavily seasoned with the belief that the President has been greatly diminished by his age, which Christie calls “an infirmity.”
