Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is please to be living “rent free” in Donald Trump‘s head, he says. Christie’s lease on the property inside the “strawberry blond” head of the former President was signed by Trump with an ALL CAPS barrage of bad blood and namechecking on the “RealDonaldTrump” Truth Social account. For Christie, such publicity — however ill-intended — is a good thing.
While Trump invective could destroy any semblance of MAGA support for the likes of Ron DeSantis or Vivek Ramaswamy, Trump lashing out at Christie only keeps Christie relevant — especially important as the former Governor polls in the low single digits.
So when Trump posted that Christie should “drop out of the race. He is going nowhere and his very bad for the Republican Party,” Christie smiled, knowing he’d be asked to respond.
But Christie responded less as a Presidential candidate than as a lawyer wearing his prosecutor’s hat. Christie boasts impressive credentials as the U.S. Attorney in the fifth largest office in the country, never losing a case, going 130-0 in seven years “for political corruption prosecutions when I was U.S. Attorney,” he says.
Christie: I'm not getting out of this race. Maybe he should think about getting out of the race since he'll be spending most of March and half of April in a courtroom pic.twitter.com/yBD86lO7XF
— Acyn (@Acyn) August 30, 2023
The fact that Christie chose to bomb Trump’s legal wounds — what he calls “laying out the truth about him” — brings attention to Trump’s largest vulnerability. While polls indicate Trump will win the GOP nomination, recent national polls indicate that a majority of Americans believe it’s right that Trump should be prosecuted and face his day(s) in court.
That’s where Christie the lawyer claims even greater relevance for his criticism: Trump may not be punished by primary voters, but punishment looms for him in the courts nonetheless. Christie, who asserts that he is uniquely “credible” on Trump’s legal peril given his experience, says “I know how deep his problems are.”
Christie says plainly “I’m not just some politician talking about his (legal) problems, I’m someone who has done it and done it well.”
Despite his desire to run against Joe Biden, Christie must first run against Donald Trump — and he’s been the GOP candidate most willing, so far, to take Trump on directly. Trump’s impending trials will offer him an even larger platform.
Right now, to hear Christie speculate about the depth of Trump’s legal troubles — echoed by former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance’s take that she smells Trump “desperation” — only indicates how much more there is to play out before the GOP really selects its candidate. If Christie is right on the law, the passion of MAGA for its man may not matter.
Asked about Trump’s legal vulnerability, Christie told Kara Swisher in an interview:
I think that the most legally perilous one for him is the documents’ case for two reasons. One, because of the nature of those documents. And I think a jury, when they ultimately see them, will be really, really offended by the idea that someone would keep these things illegally and then show them around to people willy-nilly. And secondly, the obstruction is so blatant. And even now, the superseding indictment on sending Fredo down to Mar-a-Lago to delete the server, it’s so blatant that it is an acknowledgement of guilt and fault. Because, if you didn’t think you did anything wrong, you wouldn’t be looking to delete the information off of the cameras. You’d say, ‘Look at whatever you want to look at. I didn’t do anything wrong.’
Chris Christie
