Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie told CNN’s Jake Tapper he was wrong about former President Donald Trump. He thought he could help make Trump a better president; however, he now thinks he was wrong.
“Turns out I was wrong. I couldn’t make him a better candidate and I couldn’t make him a better president, and he disappointed me,” Christie told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “The Lead,” and he called election night 2020 “the breaking point.”
After the 2020 election, Christie urged Trump to accept defeat, which led the two men to part ways.
“Quite frankly, the conduct of the president’s legal team has been a national embarrassment,” Christie said of the team of Trump lawyers who set out to unsuccessfully prove voter fraud following the election.
Allies Turned Enemies
Christie ran against Donald Trump for president in 2016 and lost. After Trump won the presidency Christie became an influential player during his administration. He served as vice-chairman of Trump’s 2016 presidential transition team.
Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner kept Christie from having a bigger role in the administration because he was seething over the fact Christie put his father, Charles, behind bars for tax evasion in 2003.
Trump appointed FBI Director Christopher Wray, who had been his personal lawyer in the Bridgegate scandal, on Christie’s recommendation. Wray’s conduct in the Bridgegate scandal and conduct as FBI director could come back to haunt Christie, because Trump appointed him to replace James Comey at his urging.
Texts and emails showed that Christie’s vendetta against Fort Lee, N.J.’s mayor led to them closing lanes on the George Washington Bridge, which caused a traffic jam in 2013. Christie was upset that the town’s mayor did not endorse his 2013 bid for re-election.
“But when I make a misjudgment, I’ll admit it,” Christie said of his past support of Trump.
Christie on Mission to Beat Trump on Debate Stage
Christie’s popularity is around 1% in the polls; however, he seems to have one mission now. Neutralize Trump.
He’s an experienced debater, whose barb against Sen. Marco Rubio on the 2016 debate stage was portrayed by the media as having extinguished the senator’s candidacy. Rubio denied this in a tweet saying that anyone who claimed that was “lazy” or “dumb.”
He recalled his debate with Rubio last year when he was asked if Trump could be beaten.
“You better have somebody on that stage who can do to him what I did to Marco, because that’s the only thing that’s gonna defeat Donald Trump,” Christie said.
Christie seems to want to be that person.
“I think character is destiny for this country, and we’ve got to make a decision about what the character of the person should be who sits behind the desk in the Oval Office,” he told Tapper.
Chris Christie Calls Out Trump’s Classified Documents
Chris Christie, who was a U.S. attorney prior to becoming governor, hit Trump for holding onto classified documents after he left the White House during the CNN interview.
“The classified documents that he had – that we now know he had – were things that should have never left the White House. And if he, in fact, knew that he had these documents, was looking at them, utilizing them in some way after he left the office – and it looks like maybe even two years after he left office – it’s a big problem,” Christie said.
His entry to the race probably will not make a dent, but he hopes to get voters to reconsider Trump.
John Rossomando was a senior analyst for Defense Policy and served as Senior Analyst for Counterterrorism at The Investigative Project on Terrorism for eight years. His work has been featured in numerous publications such as The American Thinker, The National Interest, National Review Online, Daily Wire, Red Alert Politics, CNSNews.com, The Daily Caller, Human Events, Newsmax, The American Spectator, TownHall.com, and Crisis Magazine. He also served as senior managing editor of The Bulletin, a 100,000-circulation daily newspaper in Philadelphia, and received the Pennsylvania Associated Press Managing Editors first-place award for his reporting.
From 19FortyFive
Liz Cheney: Could She Join the Democratic Party?
