Chris Christie goes waving at Trump and pleading with his party

Chris Christie ended his second presidential campaign as he began it, with a blistering and personal takedown of Donald J. Trump, intended to spark a reckoning in his party.

Anticipation had been building throughout the day for the comments from Mr. Christie, a former governor of New Jersey, after news spread hours earlier that he was telling his closest allies about his decision.

With all three major cable news networks broadcasting the speech live, Christie used the rare spotlight — something that had largely eluded his campaign — to make an urgent appeal to his party’s better angels. He framed his hostility toward Trump in sweeping, historical terms, casting himself as the veteran party elder who warned of the potential dangers ahead.

“Imagine if 9/11 had happened with Donald Trump behind the desk,” Christie said. “The first thing he would have done was run to the bunker to protect himself. He would have put himself first before this country, and anyone who is unwilling to say he is unfit to be president of the United States is unfit to be president of the United States.”

Mr. Trump’s campaign responded with a memo from his pollster, John McLaughlin, saying that Mr. Christie would be “embarrassed” by the results of the Iowa caucuses on Monday and that he “generally disliked” New Hampshire voters. which will hold the primaries on January 23. Mr. Christie had focused his campaign on New Hampshire but struggled to make himself a contender.

Mr Christie also grappled with his own role in Mr Trump’s rise, acknowledging that he had capitulated to ambition when he ended his 2016 presidential bid and surprising much of the political establishment at the time by backing Mr Trump . Mr Christie described his second campaign as something of a redemption tour.

“I would rather lose by telling the truth than lie to win, and I feel no different today because this is a battle for the soul of our party and the soul of our country,” he said.

Mr. Christie paced back and forth across the stage as he spoke and appeared emotional at times, including as he spoke about the supporters who had urged him to stay in the race. His voice broke as he quoted Benjamin Franklin’s warning that Americans had “got a republic, if you can keep it.”

“Benjamin Franklin’s words have never been more relevant in America than they are today,” Mr. Christie said. “The last time they were this relevant was during the Civil War.”

Mr. Christie did not spare his rivals in the race, saying in public what he had said privately to others: that neither Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida nor former Governor Nikki Haley of South Carolina went hard enough against Trump.

He said that if Mr. Trump were to become the nominee, his victory would be traced back to the first Republican debate. Mr. Christie was the only candidate on stage to indicate he would not support the former president if Mr. Trump were convicted of any of the 91 charges he faces.

“I want you to imagine for a moment that Jefferson and Hamilton and Adams and Washington and Franklin were sitting here tonight,” Mr. Christie said. “Do you think they can imagine that the country they risked their lives for would actually have a conversation about whether a convicted criminal should become president of the United States?”

But Mr. Christie’s speech is unlikely to move the needle within the Republican Party. Many of the party’s leading figures have tried without success in recent years.

In 2016, Mitt Romney used his status as a former Republican presidential candidate to denounce Mr. Trump as a “fraud” whose promises were “worthless” and who “played the American public for suckers.” Mr. Trump won the nomination, and the White House.

Following the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, spoke from the Senate floor to say that Trump supporters involved in the attack had been “fed lies” and “provoked by the president” . Mr Trump was later acquitted in an impeachment trial in the Senate, a decision supported by Mr McConnell.

Two years ago, Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, speaking from the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, said that Mr. Trump was “trying to unravel the foundations of our constitutional republic” and had “gone to war with the rule of law.”

Months later, she was unseated by a Trump-backed primary challenger.

Alyce McFadden reporting contributed.