Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has been going full-guns after Donald Trump to try to move the static needle in the GOP primary for president, calling the former President a liar and a cheat — and indicating that Trump’s legal problems are extremely deep, a situation Christie says he is uniquely suited to assess as a former prosecutor and U.S. Attorney.
But though he is not done trying to unseat Trump from the MAGA — and therefore GOP — throne the former President sits on, Christie is aiming across the aisle too, hoping his criticism of President Joe Biden will land and rally some supporters to his side in a way that his ridicule of Trump has failed to do.
In the audio below, Christie has a go at knocking both Trump and Biden, saying that neither is a viable option for moving the country forward. Trump’s wanton spending in the Oval Office compromises his credibility, Christie says, when criticizing Biden’s spending, for one example. (The comment also demonstrates that Christie hasn’t yet solved the riddle of breaking Trump’s support, which doesn’t rely on items that were once considered important by conservatives, like how much he added to the deficit.)
What do we want to be talking about next fall?
— Chris Christie (@GovChristie) September 6, 2023
How much jail time Trump is facing? Or Joe Biden’s awful performance as President?
Trump’s problems aren’t ours. We should be bringing the fight to Biden.
Join the fight here: https://t.co/po2gyHmNPD pic.twitter.com/hytskTb8P3
But Christie does try to cleave the Republican Party away from Trump rhetorically — by proposing that the emphasis on defending Trump against all the problems he faces is a distraction to the successful future of the party. The more the GOP focuses on Trump, the more it wastes the opportunities provided by what he perceives as Biden’s “awful” failures.
Christie asserts that “Trump’s problems aren’t ours,” a statement which — to see the focus of GOP congressional members like James Comer and Marjorie Taylor Greene — isn’t how Trump’s problems are interpreted by the most raucous MAGA voices.
Those voices continually contend that an alleged persecution of Trump by the Left is the most important issue facing the nation, and that a “weaponized” justice system threatens to invalidate the American ideal.
Christie instead tries to appeal to what he sees as a larger subsection of the electorate — those who want to tame inflation, put food on the table, and live prosperously in a law-abiding nation with forward-thinking leadership. He believes this group is larger, if not louder, than Trump’s diehard supporters, and he believes the problems facing everyday Americans are different in scale and importance from those facing the former President in court.
So far however, the GOP response to Christie’s gambit has been tepid. He continues to try to separate Trump’s problems from America’s problems, because he sees evidence that if the GOP continues to equate the two — and fails to address the vulnerabilities of the Democratic incumbent instead — the GOP is going to lose.
