Christie attacks Trump, calls behavior described in indictment ‘appalling’

Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie clashed on primetime television Monday night with Donald J. Trump, denouncing the former president as an “angry” and “vengeful” man who bears the responsibility of turning the nation into another extraordinarily divided moment, after Mr. Trump became the first former president in US history to face federal indictments.

During a roughly 90-minute CNN New York City Hall talk, an energetic and often polished Mr. Christie leaned on his background as a former federal prosecutor and said he believed the indictment was “a very tight, very detailed evidence-laden indictment, and the behavior in that is appalling Mr. Christie, who is running for president against Mr. Trump in a Republican primary field the former president dominates, said he believed prosecutors had more evidence than had been put forward so far .

Mr. Trump faces 37 criminal charges related to such things as withholding national defense information and concealing possession of classified documents.

“This is a runaway vanity,” Mr Christie told the moderator, Anderson Cooper. “He’s going to make this country go through this now, when we didn’t have to go through it.”

“He says, ‘I’m more important than the country,'” Mr. Christie said at another time, questioning why Mr. Trump had refused to turn over critical government documents, according to prosecutors. He suggested that the former president lacked the “traits of the presidency.”

“We are in a situation where there are people in my own party who are blaming DOJ,” he said, referring to the Justice Department. ‘How about blaming him? He did it. He kept – he took documents that he was not allowed to take with him.

If he wasn’t attacking the current Republican frontrunner, Mr. Christie could sound like a pre-Trump politician. He emphasized the importance of finding common ground and toyed with his credentials as the blue state’s executive, even as some in the public were downright skeptical of the idea of ​​compromise.

“With all due respect to these red state governors who have Republican legislatures — man, I tell you, I would have given my own right arm to have a Republican legislature for a week,” Christie said at one point . seems to draw an implicit contrast to Governor Ron DeSantis, the powerful and combative Republican from Florida and another 2024 candidate enjoying a supporting legislature in Tallahassee. “But what I’ve learned is that sometimes getting 60 percent of what you want isn’t bad.”

In Washington, he continued, “you want someone who is strong, a fighter, but who fights to finish, to achieve something for you. We can all fight to make headlines.”

He also noted that even with a Republican-controlled Congress for part of his term, Trump failed to deliver on a central campaign pledge to secure the southern border.

“Not a single piece of legislation to change our immigration laws,” he said, berating Trump as a “bad executive.” “It’s a terrible failure, and now he’s blaming it on Joe Biden. But what the hell did you do to make it better?

Mr. Christie, who announced his campaign last week, has largely sought to re-introduce himself to the nation as the Republican nominee most willing to violently confront Mr. Trump.

But Mr Christie, who ran a short-lived campaign for president in 2016, has gained little traction this year in the available polls and has a more unfavorable rating among Republican voters than any other candidate, according to a recent Monmouth University poll. And he occupies a relatively lonely job. Most other 2024 hopefuls eschewed much direct criticism of Mr. Trump.

“It was like he was Voldemort from ‘Harry Potter’ — nobody wanted to mention his name,” he said in a mocking voice of a recent Republican campaign event. “Like, say his name, man, say his name.”

Mr. Christie was once a key adviser to Mr. Trump, and was a relatively early supporter of his 2016 campaign after his own bid fell through. But he has since denounced Mr. Trump for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election and for instigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

At City Hall, Mr. Christie compared Mr. Trump’s lies about a stolen election to how a child might try to explain away a bad grade, offering a litany of dubious or false excuses.

“It is a child’s reaction. And I – I beg you to think about this,” he told the Republican audience. “Don’t let showmanship obscure the facts. The facts are that he lost to Joe Biden. And he lost to Joe Biden in my opinion, because he lost independent voters.”

Mr Trump lashed out last week in response to Mr Christie’s previous criticism, mocking Mr Christie’s weight and writing on his Truth Social platform: “Hard to watch, boring, but that is what you get from a failed governor (New Jersey) who left office with a 7% approval rating and then was ejected from New Hampshire.

Mr Christie made little waves when questioned on issues unrelated to Mr Trump, but made a striking admission when a man whose son was killed in the 2017 Las Vegas massacre asked how he could explain the massive number of mass shootings in the United States would decrease.

His answer was effective: I don’t know.

“I’m angry because I don’t have a good answer,” he said, after saying law enforcement should pay more attention to warning signs from would-be attackers, but that he didn’t believe restrictions on guns would make a difference — in part because Americans are already there owning hundreds of millions of them. He also said reducing gun violence was in “tension” with the Second Amendment.

When reminded that he favored a ban on assault weapons early in his political career, he called it “naivety” and said he no longer thought it appropriate.

On abortion rights, Mr. Christie declined to take a firm stance on pregnancy limits — or that he would sign a national ban should he become president and one reach his desk — arguing that the issue was better left to the states left for now.

And on Social Security, he reiterated his support for the program’s income testing, as he suggested during his 2016 campaign.

Time and time again, Mr. Christie reinforced a central argument of his campaign: that he would be more responsible than Mr. Trump, but also more productive.

“Look, I think the single most important thing I can contribute to the unification of this country is to get rid of Joe Biden and get rid of Donald Trump,” he said. “They’re past their expiration date, okay? It’s finished. It’s time.”