Former New Jersey governor Chris Christie has indicated he would not support or vote for Donald Trump if he once again becomes the Republican presidential nominee for 2024, warning he is not fit to ever serve again in the Oval Office.
Christie, who is said to be strongly considering running against Trump for the nomination, said in an interview with Axios that Trump’s position on the January 6th protests was among the many reasons he could not support Trump ever again.
“I can’t help him. No way,” he told the outlet. “When you have the Jan. 6 choir at a rally and you show video of it — I just don’t think that person is appropriate for the presidency.”
“I’m going to go out there and tell the truth,” he added. “Like the truth matters. The truth is not negotiable.”
After suspending his own campaign in the 2016 election cycle after a disappointing performance in the primaries, Christie became one of the first high-ranking Republicans to support Trump as the latter fought off bitter challenges from Sens. Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio.
In 2018, Christie was offered (but declined) the role of White House Chief of Staff and even assisted the former president in debate preparation against Joe Biden during the 2020 campaign.
According to Axios, Christie “is prepared to play the role of anti-Trump prosecutor at a time when Trump’s other Republican rivals have been reticent to go after him directly,” and plans to take inspiration from his brutal takedown of Marco Rubio during his last presidential debates.
“You better have somebody on that stage who can do to [Trump] what I did to Marco, because that’s the only thing that’s going to defeat Donald Trump,” he said. “And that means you have to be fearless, because he will come back and right at you.”
“Look, what I thought in 2016 was that [Trump] going to be the nominee, and I don’t want Hillary Clinton to be the president,” Christie added of his past support for Trump. “Did I have concerns about him? Of course, but you probably have concerns about any candidate other than yourself in the end.”
Christie officially withdrew his support for Trump in the wake of January 6th protests, pouring scorn on the widely held Republican view that the 2020 presidential election was tainted by electoral fraud and a desire from the Washington Deep State to remove Trump from office.
“January 6 was a riot that was incited by Donald Trump in an effort to intimidate Mike Pence and the Congress into doing exactly what he said in his own words last week: overturn the election,” Christie said in February 2022. “He wanted the election to be overturned.”
However, Christie maintained that despite his opposition to Trump, he would never vote for Joe Biden either, describing both men as “out of touch.”
“I can’t imagine myself voting for Joe Biden, either,” he said. “I don’t know if I can vote for either of these guys. They’re both too old. They’re both out of touch with what’s going on in the world right now.”
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