Christie announcing his candidacy on June 6.
Photographer: Mark Peterson/ReduxChris Christie Is Absolutely, Totally 100% Anti-Trump. For Now
Once a Trump endorser and VP contender, the GOP presidential hopeful is trying to stand out by attacking the oft-indicted front-runner. Will anyone buy it?
Every Republican running for president has to do one thing to have a shot at winning: break Donald Trump’s grip on the party’s voters. And yet only one seems to really be trying. As most candidates twist themselves into knots to avoid offending Trump—even with the indictments piling up—former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is taking an entirely different tack. “Here’s my problem, and why I got in,” Christie said with slightly exaggerated Jersey brashness at a recent campaign stop in Columbia, South Carolina. “They won’t tell you the truth about Donald Trump. They’re afraid of him!”
Christie wants voters to know he’s not. In South Carolina he employed the firm, direct language of a counselor staging an intervention to explain why Republicans need to kick their Trump addiction. The former president, he said, is “selfish” and “disgraceful,” a serially bankrupted con man who “doesn’t care about you,” fleeces small donors to pay his legal bills and knows full well he lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden. “He lies!” Christie practically shouted. If Republicans nominate Trump again, he warned, they’ll guarantee Biden four more years in the White House. “Donald Trump,” he said, “cannot win.”