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I suspect that Chris Christie’s fondest dream — a dream, that is, not involving calorie intake — is to reprise his barrage against Marco Rubio with Donald Trump as the target. Christie’s preferred rhetorical weapon is the blunderbuss, and he can be quite effective. I used to delight in watching his fusillades against whining public school teachers and, truth be told, I snickered a little watching him blow a hole in Marco Rubio’s presidential aspirations.
Can he do the same thing to Donald Trump? That’s his hope. Christie, who is set to announce his candidacy for the GOP presidential nomination in New Hampshire today, is basically running as an anti-Trump attack mastiff.
This was not always his role. Christie was a Trump stalwart in 2016. He helped run Trump’s transition. Then he was thrown over by Trump, ejected without so much as a cabinet post. Unforgivable.
Take a look at Christie’s Twitter feed today. Anti-Trump animus is a major leitmotif. For example, following Trump’s performance at the CNN town hall a few weeks back, Christie tweeted, “Donald Trump refused to say tonight that he wanted Ukraine to win the war with Russia. More proof that he continues to be Putin’s puppet.”
Was it, Chris? Or was it merely an expression of Trump’s desire to end the carnage in Ukraine?
As I write, the sixty-year-old former governor of New Jersey is running at 1 percent, or possibly a bit under, in the polls, a not entirely encouraging showing. It was recently announced that New York Mets owner Steven Cohen, who poured a couple million into Christie’s failed 2016 bid for president, is once again backing Christie for his 2024 run. Those sniffing around for signs of success may be taken aback to learn that Christie’s recently formed Super PAC, “Tell It Like It Is,” is being run by Brian Jones, who also advised Senator John McCain in his 2008 presidential bid and Mitt Romney in his bid in 2012.
From one point of view, Christie will almost certainly complete Jones’s trifecta of failure. Many things can change in the course of an election season. Chris Christie inspires at least one certitude: he is not going to be the GOP nominee for president in 2024.
But can he at least damage Donald Trump? Maybe. I wouldn’t count on it, though. For one thing, Donald Trump can be as rude as Christie. For another thing, it is not at all clear that Christie will have an opportunity to debate Trump. The first RNC debate is scheduled for August 23 in Milwaukee. Will Christie have achieved the minimum level of support to participate? Possibly. But maybe not.
More to the point: will Trump participate? To gain a place on the stage, candidates must promise to support whomever the GOP decides upon as its candidate. Will Trump do that? Maybe he’ll just hold a rally that night instead, rendering the debate pointless.
The GOP establishment hates Trump. He knows that. Everyone says that a crowded field only helps him, but the lure of the spotlight is too powerful. People keep jumping in. Christie today, maybe Mike Pence tomorrow, maybe Doug Burgum (who? oh, right, governor of North Dakota). Then there is Nikki Haley, Tim Scott, Vivek Ramaswamy, Asa Hutchinson (!) and of course the great white hope of the donor class, Ron DeSantis.
Making all due provision for John Maynard Keynes’s observation that the inevitable never happens, it’s always the unexpected, I nevertheless offer these predictions: Chris Christie will not be the nominee. If he gets to debate, he will unload on Trump, but then Trump will shrug and move on unscathed. The GOP nominee will be Trump or DeSantis, and at this point, admittedly early days, it looks increasingly like it will be Trump.
Whoever the GOP candidate is, he (and it will be a “he”) will not be facing Joe Biden, who is clearly slated for the the political equivalent of the glue factory. It’s not just the accumulation of scandals plaguing Sleepy Joe, it’s the change in tone from the media and the puppet-masters that tell it what and how to report the news.
If it were the weather we were talking about now, we’d note that it was a summer day when clouds suddenly darkened and the wind picked up and shifted directions. The leaves in the trees are whooshing ominously and the birds battening down. A storm is coming for Biden, and soon. It is too soon to say whether the onslaught will clear the air or leave a muzzy stickiness behind, as storms sometimes do. Anyway, there will be a lot of rain to go around. Chris Christie will be but an afterthought.
