Chris Christie Explains Why He Believes His Attacks On Trump Will Work Where Others Have

Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie said last week his attacks on Donald Trump will work where others have failed because it will be the first time that the public has heard someone “prosecute the case” against the former president.

Christie, a former federal prosecutor, made the remarks during an interview last week on PBS’s “Firing Line with Margaret Hoover.” When asked how his broadsides could weaken the former president, especially given that attacks usually strengthen Trump’s poll numbers, Christie said that Trump’s supporters have “never” seen “anybody prosecute the case against him, a fellow Republican prosecute the case against him.”

“They’ve never had a Republican come out and really directly make the case in the context of a campaign on the facts against his record,” he said. “Margaret, he said he was going to repeal and replace Obamacare. He didn’t do it, even with a Republican Congress. He said he was going to build a wall across the entire border and Mexico was going to pay for it. He not only didn’t build the wall, we haven’t gotten our first peso from Mexico. He said he was going to balance the budget in four years. He left with the highest deficit of any president in modern history. He said he was going to retire the national debt in eight years. He’s added trillions to the national debt.”

Christie acknowledged that there were good things that Trump accomplished while in office.

“The tax cut was good,” he said. “Some of his regulatory reform was good. The Abraham Accords in the Middle East were good. But other than that, on the main core things he promised our Republican base, he failed. No one’s prosecuted that case.”

Christie said that he will know if his method of going after the president is working if he is raising money and if his poll numbers are going up.

“I think that there is a large part of our party that quietly, in a whispered tone, has had enough,” he said.

Christie said that Trump has disqualified himself from being president by claiming the 2020 election was stolen, the events of January 6, and the situation over the classified documents.

Christie hinted that he will not support Trump for president if Trump wins the nomination, even though he would have to pledge his support for the eventual nominee if he wants to end up on the Republican primary debate stage—assuming he meets the polling the donation criteria.

“I plan to do whatever I have to do to save my party and save my country. And to do that, I’ve got to be on the debate stage,” he said. “So they want me to sign a piece of paper? I’ll sign the piece of paper the same way Donald Trump signed it in 2016 and then got on the debate stage and nine of us raised our hands to reaffirm the pledge we had signed, and he refused to. And no one kicked him off the stage after that. No one prevented him from being in another debate. So I’m happy to rest on that precedent.”

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