For all four years of the Trump presidency, Chris Christie was one of his chief apologists. I watched him defend the indefensible on ABC News every Sunday, where he served as a regular panelist on their weekly news roundup. Perhaps during his more candid moments, when presented with some of Trump’s most flagrant violations of presidential norms, Christie might have offered a tepid, “That was not helpful.”
I recall that this was the remark he offered when Trump oversaw the caging of children at the southern border; when Trump tried to pull the plug on NATO; when Trump savaged John McCain for being captured and tortured as a soldier in Vietnam; when Trump tried to extort the president of Ukraine for dirt on Hunter Biden; and when Trump hosted super-spreader events at the White House and at his political rallies, exposing all in attendance to a deadly virus, including Christie, who was hospitalized after contracting COVID at one such event.
Christie was desperate to be Trump’s attorney general, clearly underestimating the effect of having previously, as New Jersey’s attorney general, sent Jared Kushner’s father to jail for conspiring to destroy the reputation of his own brother. Or perhaps he just underestimated the power wielded in the White House by Trump’s son-in-law, who hated Christie’s guts.
When it became clear that Christie was to be offered no formal position in Trump’s administration, Christie settled for crumbs as an “informal advisor” to the president. The fact that Trump only accepts feedback that accords with his own pathological distortions of fact and reality appeared to be of little concern to Christie. Also of little concern was the fact that half of MAGA world, including the dishonest, obsequious talking heads at Fox News, also served as “informal” advisors. Functioning as any sort of advisor to Trump is not exactly a mark of distinction, unless the distinction includes potential criminal liability for aiding and abetting a number of prosecutable felonies.
It was not until after the 2020 election, and the subsequent Capitol riot on January 6 of the following year, that Christie appeared to wake up and smell the coffee. Of course, by that time, the coffee had boiled down to a burnt, bitter sludge.
Christie was NOT a profile in courage during Trump’s presidency, but he finally located his ability to tell the truth well past the 11th hour. He, like a number of other members in his party, at last developed the capacity to state the obvious: Donald Trump was unfit to be the president of the United States.
Then Christie decided to run for president.
Just to be clear, I do not agree with a number of Christie’s policy positions, but it was a relief to see a regular, centrist Republican joining the field of candidates. He was alone among his competitors in saying that he would not support or vote for Donald Trump if Trump received the Republican nomination for a second term. He determinedly reminded voters of Trump’s utter malfeasance, and the audience rewarded his candor by trying to boo him off the stage. Undeterred, Christie continued to try to make the case against a second Trump presidency.
And that persistence doomed his own candidacy.
This past week, Christie departed the field of presidential hopefuls, unable to attract a sufficient number of big- or small-money donors. He learned, for the umpty-ninth time, that his party doesn’t want the truth. They want Trump’s anti-democratic politics of grievance and revenge.
So be it. But then Christie gave a barnburner of a final speech to announce his withdrawal from the field of candidates. He told the unvarnished truth about Trump to a small gathering of his supporters in New Hampshire. They applauded.
I would see this as a hopeful sign that the Trump fever dream might yet break, but I am too much of a realist to presume that the mega-loyal MAGA base will follow suit.
I have searched in vain for a verbatim transcript of Christie’s New Hampshire speech, considering it to be good enough to reprint here, but, so far, no luck. Even Christie’s campaign website didn’t carry it. For those who missed it, it boiled down to Christie explicitly describing why Trump represents a clear and continuing threat to democracy and the rule of law; savaging his fellow candidates as weak-kneed in their flaccid responses to the front-runner; and accepting responsibility for providing five years of slavish loyalty to a dangerous madman because Christie cared more about proximity to power than about the fact that Trump was insane. Christie went on to pledge that he would never again sacrifice his beliefs or principles for the sake of political expediency.
We will see just how firm his resolve is in the very near future, because no sooner had he bowed out of the race, offered his heartfelt mea culpa, and vowed to forevermore put the people’s best interests ahead of his own, the No Labels party came a callin’.
Thursday evening, exactly 24 hours after Christie’s farewell speech, former Senator and vice-presidential hopeful Joe Lieberman was all over the airwaves, issuing an open invitation to Christie: Hey, Chris! Please join the No Labels party and be our nominee for president.
For those whose memory of Joe Lieberman is somewhat hazy, allow me to remind you that he was a Democrat like Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema are Democrats—which is to say, not so much.
I am confident that Chris Christie has enough political savvy and plain common sense to understand that a third-party candidate will syphon off independent voters, and in a deeply divided two-party system, the next election is likely to be determined by that group. Trump’s base voters will never vote for anyone other than Trump, and there are a not insignificant number of Democratic voters who, in spite of the demonstrably positive results of Biden’s domestic policies, find him uninspiring and may consider throwing their vote to a third-party candidate as well. A third party will not generate enough votes from the disaffected to constitute an electoral majority; all they will do is capture enough votes to ensure a second Trump presidency.
We are soon to discover just how firm is Christie’s resolve to adopt a new, more selfless approach to making sure that Donald Trump never sees another day behind the Resolute Desk.
Or he may be the individual who, through his own hubris, assures another Trump victory.
