Donald Trump is acting like "a coward" and "Putin's puppet" by refusing to support Ukraine in the war against Russia. The former president "is afraid", in addition, "to face serious candidates on stage." The reason is that he "does not have solid answers to the country's problems" and "all he wants is to go back and reprocess the 2020 elections because his feelings are hurt. He is like a child ”...
All this and more was said by the former Republican governor of New Jersey, Chris Christie, before filtering, this Thursday, that on the 6th he will launch his bid for the 2024 presidential elections. Republican primaries, and that in the absence of other probable ones that in the end can place the number of candidates around a dozen: a crowded competition that, according to analysts, can help the leader by dispersing the vote of his opponents in those primaries.
But, while the rest of these alternative candidates tend to attack the leader rather in the code No Trump , and often with overacting in form but moderation in substance, the one who was once a close collaborator of the former president is today one of his most fierce internal adversaries. He is a true anti-Trump.
As The Hill newspaper commented the day before yesterday when the new candidacy was announced, the former New Jersey governor's relationship with the former president "has given more twists and turns than a soap opera." Christie already competed with the tycoon in the 2016 primaries to later – once defeated by him – form part of his presidential transition team before the elections. But the collaboration was brief. When, a month before the elections, the video was published in which Trump said that "if you are a star" you can grab women by the genitals, Christie dismissed the comment as "indefensible". And this, according to former adviser Steve Bannon, cost him any chance of a post in the presidential cabinet.
However, the former New Jersey federal prosecutor also maintained a cordial relationship with the president, and in 2020 helped him prepare the debates with Joe Biden. But everything went to hell between them when Trump lost and insisted on denouncing false electoral fraud. Christie did not buy the complaint, and never would.
The attacks of one and the responses of the other were rising in tone. After last November's midterms, in which Republicans fared far worse than expected, narrowly winning the House without winning the Senate, Christie blamed Trump for his relative defeat for his insistence on backing candidates with few possibilities. The former president had acted, said his former collaborator, only "in favor of himself." And he added: “When he triumphed in 2016, he assured that we would get tired of winning elections thanks to him. But he looks: in 2018 we lost the Chamber; in 2020, the Senate and the White House. And now we are far below what history dictates. I'm sick of losing."
Christie, 60, was especially hard on Trump when he, following his civil conviction for sexual assault and defamation of the writer Jean Carroll, said he did not know her and it was all the result of a politically motivated false accusation. "It's ridiculous. The stories keep piling up, ”he said in a veiled allusion to the indictment of Trump for bribing porn actress Stormy Daniels. “This type of conduct is unacceptable for someone we call a leader,” he snapped.
Long before, at the end of 2021, the former governor had blamed Trump for infecting him with the covid. According to Christie, who in the fall of 2020 had to be admitted to the ICU due to the infection, the president called him on the phone when they were both hospitalized ... but not to inquire about his condition but to make sure that he would not hold him responsible. of contagion.
Trump, for his part, scorned any attempt by Christie to prosper while he was president. And then he wouldn't stop attacking or counterattacking him on his network, Truth Social; lately to call him fat, although by reproducing third-party messages, or to highlight his slim chances in the electoral race.
And it is true, according to the polls, that Christie is, in quantitative terms, less likely to put up a real battle with Trump than Florida Governor Ron DeSantis or former Vice President Mike Pence, who could also launch his candidacy next week. . But, with all that load of resentment accumulated in the poisoned relationship with the former president, the lawyer and politician from New Jersey seems the most motivated of his rivals to confront him face to face with a dog, without beating around the bush or excessive pretense; that is, without as much theater as the one that has been characterizing US politics. Or all the politics but singularly that of the paradise of the show and the non-fiction drama.
