Former New Jersey governor and declared 2024 candidate Chris Christie (R) argued on Thursday that Republicans are “tired of losing,” saying former President Trump has been an anchor on the GOP in past election cycles.
During an interview on “Fox & Friends” on Thursday, Christie pointed to Republicans’ performance in House, Senate and presidential races since 2016. “I believe the Republican Party has been losing now for nearly seven years,” he said.
“We’re tired of losing. And look, if the person at the top gets all the credit when things go well, they also must be accountable for what happens when things go badly. And the fact is that Donald Trump, the candidates he picked in these individual states and endorsed, all lost,” he said.
“And it lost big races. And so, what — I’m not trying to save the party. What I want the party to get back to doing is what we do best, which is to win and then implement smart, conservative policies for the entire country,” Christie continued.
Christie officially launched his presidential campaign Tuesday in New Hampshire, pitching himself as chief Trump antagonist as he makes his case to Republican voters to move on from the former president.
He referred to Trump during his Tuesday speech as a “lonely, self-consumed, self-serving mirror hog” and compared him to Lord Voldemort, the villain of the “Harry Potter” series.
The former president took to his Truth Social during Christie’s speech to take a few jabs at his former ally, saying “actually, his speech was SMALL, and not very good. It rambled all over the place, and nobody had a clue of what he was talking about.”
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Christie on Thursday also weighed in on the possibility that Trump could be federally indicted regarding a probe into his handling of classified documents after he left the White House. While the former New Jersey governor said he’d make a judgment on the indictment if one comes out of the case and argued that the situation for Trump was “self-inflicted.”
“Return the documents and stop doing this. Why do you have to be the center of negative attention all the time? Why do you have to be angry all the time? And that’s what Donald Trump has done,” Christie said.
“So I’ll wait to see and make a judgment on the indictment if and when one comes. But certainly, as you know, on the Alvin Bragg stuff, I said at the time, that’s a ridiculous indictment and one that I would have never brought as a prosecutor. But it doesn’t mean that the next one and the next one are not going to be problematic,” he added.