Chris Christie, Putting Out Feelers for a 2024 Run, Takes Aim at Trump
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
GOFFSTOWN, N.H. — Chris Christie wants a New Hampshire do-over.
That was the overriding message on Monday night during a visit that Mr. Christie, a 2016 presidential candidate, made to the state, a testing-the-2024-waters trip in which he sharply criticized Donald J. Trump and waxed nostalgic for his own short-lived primary campaign seven years ago.
Mr. Christie, the former Republican governor of New Jersey who is mostly an afterthought so far in polling of a potential 2024 field, evoked many moments of 2016 at the town-hall-style event. Both he and audience members revisited his last-place finish in the New Hampshire primary that year, his leaving the race and endorsing Mr. Trump, and his eager support for the former president right through the 2020 election.
Mr. Christie said that support abruptly ended on election night in 2020 when Mr. Trump signaled his intent to subvert the democratic results. Ever since, he said, Republicans have been dragged into “a sinkhole of anger and retribution” by the former president.
“You know what Donald Trump said a couple of weeks ago?” Mr. Christie said. “‘I am your retribution.’ Guess what, everybody? No thanks.”
Asked by an audience member for his favorite New Hampshire memory from 2016, Mr. Christie recalled a debate when he attacked Senator Marco Rubio of Florida for robotic responses; at the time, many observers said he had dealt a perilous blow to Mr. Rubio. Mr. Christie invited the audience to imagine him in the same role now against Mr. Trump in a hypothetical debate.
“You better have somebody on that stage who can do to him what I did to Marco,” he said.
Yet for all that Mr. Christie sounded ready to enter the fray, there are unanswered questions. Unlike some other potential candidates, he has no campaign team in waiting. He has spoken to heavyweight donors at Republican retreats in Texas and Georgia, but he is not raising money because there is no campaign to give to.
Most crucial is the question of whether there is a lane in the Republican primary contest for such an outspoken critic of Mr. Trump — who has the avid support of about one in three primary voters. No other potential Trump rival in his party has wielded such a sharp knife as Mr. Christie.
He blamed Mr. Trump’s extreme divisiveness and vindictive style, along with his embrace of election falsehoods, for Republican losses in three straight cycles: the House majority in 2018, the White House in 2020 and key Senate and governors’ races in 2022. “Particularly suburban women abandoned” Mr. Trump “because they had enough,” Mr. Christie said. It is naïve, he added, to “think they’re coming back for more in 2024.”
Ray Washburne, who was Mr. Christie’s 2016 finance chairman, said the former governor “wants for sure” to run again. The challenge, he added, is clear: “What lane does he take? Being total anti-Trump loses a base of 35 percent.”
A longtime adviser to Mr. Christie, Maria Comella, who accompanied him to New Hampshire, said the notion of lanes in a primary — in which candidates appeal to one portion of an electorate defined by demographics and ideology — was antiquated.
“The idea that at some point there has to be a pathway or a lane, and it was this very calculated structure and everyone fit into one and if you didn’t there wasn’t a viable path — I think it’s as if we’re back 20 years in a campaign cycle,” she said.
Mr. Christie has said he will decide on his plans by mid-May.
Besides Mr. Trump, he lashed Gov. Ron DeSantis, Republican of Florida, for downplaying Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and for saying the United States should not get into a “proxy war” with China.
“Someone please place a wake-up call to Tallahassee,” Mr. Christie said.
Citing Chinese-made fentanyl that is “killing 100,000 Americans a year,” and China’s close ties with Russia, Mr. Christie said the Florida governor was “naïve” to say that he wanted to avoid a proxy war with China. “We’re in one, and now the question is, Who’s going to win?” he said.
The event on Monday took place at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at St. Anselm College, a venerable campaign destination whose walls are hung with pictures of Ronald Reagan on a snowmobile and campaign posters for Jimmy Carter and dozens of others.
The audience was at best a minority slice of the Republican voting base. There were people who expressed nostalgia for John Kasich, the former center-right Ohio governor who came in second to Mr. Trump in the state in 2016 and then quickly faded. There were also independents and Democrats, including some who knew Mr. Christie best as the house conservative on ABC News political shows. They seemed interested to hear a Republican criticize one of their own. There were also fallen-away Trump loyalists.
Ruth Dabrowski, who said she voted for Mr. Trump in both of his presidential bids, was one. She said she would abandon the party if he was the 2024 nominee. “Jan. 6 did it for me,” she said. “I washed my hands and said that was it.”
Ms. Dabrowski, a retiree from Goffstown, said she wasn’t sure whether Mr. Christie could win much support in a Republican primary. “If he does as well as he did tonight — maybe,” she said.
The first question to Mr. Christie came from Saul Shriber, who asked why he hadn’t attacked Mr. Trump in that 2016 debate instead of Mr. Rubio. Mr. Christie answered that it had been a strategic mistake by all of the Republican candidates that year, none of whom thought Mr. Trump could win, until he did.
Mr. Shriber, a retired teacher from Chester, N.H., said he could support Mr. Christie in the primary as a foil to Mr. Trump.
“If he’s a man of truth like he’s saying, then I can forgive and forget” 2016, he said. “But he’d better not disappoint me again.”
Return of the RINOs? It’s an attractive idea, but the MAGA-T swamp may well take a generation to self-drain and until then the likes of Christie have as much hope as a popsicle in an oven set to self-clean.
He and Pence are in the same boat. You have to wonder, "what are they thinking?".
But, he attacked Trump, and that's a good thing. Hopefully other hopefuls will follow his lead.
It would be nice if repubs would take the chief bullshitter by the horns and stop hoping for dems to do the dirty work for them.
That’s very hard to do if you are in a red district. Trump’s popularity numbers are too high and you will lose in the primary contest. MAGA loyalists dominate the party at the state level.
I think a NYC indictment will win Trump even more sympathy support yet doom him in the general.
It wouldn’t surprise me if that is Dem strategy and if they is it will likely work.
The Repubs have trapped themselves.
The only reason Trump's numbers are high in those red districts is that cowardly republicans refuse to stand up to Trump. They have coddled and protected him for so long that the truth no longer applies to him.
There is a new YouGuv poll that shows 78% of Republicans would accept a second Trump presidency. Not that 78% will vote for him in the primary, but they are open to voting for him in the general and it wont bother them at all if he is re-elected. In the face of those sorts of numbers he should cruise to the GOP nomination.
What I find even more amazing is the number of republicans that will ignore, dispute, or just plain deny facts when confronted with them.
Ask Liz what she thinks about that.
Another entry into the world of WWE.
super canoli.
Christie had his moment in 2012. Its been downhill since.
We've seen political comebacks, but I don't see that happening with Christie.
Once he allowed himself to be publicly seen as a Trump sycophant / servant, his chances of ever winning the presidency were gone.
He will be shown to flip flop as often as it's convenient, plus he's not populist enough to win with the base so can't win the primary anyway. He may do some damage to Trump in the Primaries... enough to help DeSantis. Maybe... DeSantis on his pledge to sign new anti-abortion laws in FL won't help him win the wider general election though.
Thing is, those who continue to support Trump will obviously not be dissuaded by other candidates. To damage Trump, his die-hard supporters need to somehow get free of their cult-like sycophant following of Trump. Maybe this will happen to a degree if Trump continues to attack DeSantis. Hard to say since current (remaining) Trump supporters are, by definition, irrational.
tactful, but they're mental without hope of rehabilitation...
Of course some will support Trump no matter what, but I think many more will go with the conservative populist they think has the best chances of beating Biden in the general. They will follow whomever they are told to follow by those like MTG, Banon, Fox News and Turley. IF these people turn on Trump because he can't win the general then more voters will. I think we'll get excellent polling on the primaries this year.
Well we will find out. Thus far I have seen no indication that extant Trump supporters can conceive of anything other than Trump 2024.
Next year will be most interesting for sure. I base my thoughts here on Trump pulling smaller crowds these days. Still too many, of course.
No chance. He's not MAGA enough to get the nomination, and even if he did, he has sucked up to Trump too much to win the general.
He is the male Nikki Haley.
With the added scandals of Bridgegate and pics of him sitting on a public beach that was closed to the public.
None of them had administrations that purposely caused severe traffic jams in an area where traffic is already a pain in the ass, while deliberately withholding from law enforcement and emergency services the fact that they planned to cause traffic jams. That will piss off reasonable people of any political persuasion.
He was embarrassingly sucking up to Trump … behaved (sycophantically) like a servant. I was quite surprised to see that instant transformation. No way is he presidential material.
He can’t get elected now. If he thinks he can, he’s delusional.
What’s new?