Look out, Donald — here comes the Big Gov

“If you want to be the man, you got to beat the man,” Chris Christie said last week, hyping his campaign to take the GOP presidential nomination from former President Trump.

“There is only one lane (to win the 2024 GOP nomination) and it’s through Donald Trump,” he said in an interview with Piers Morgan. He is establishing himself as the only man left in the Republican Party, and certainly in its presidential field, who doesn’t fear Trump.

The first round of Christie’s man-on-man fight with Trump is scheduled for the Republican National Committee’s debate stage in Milwaukee next month. Trump is not committed to the fight — against Christie or any of the other candidates for the GOP nomination.

“It’s actually not fair,” the former president complained to Fox News. “Why would you let somebody [who] is at zero or one or two or three [percent in the polls] be popping you with questions? I haven’t really made up my mind.”

But even off stage, Christie demands attention with his incessant jabs at the leader of the GOP pack.

He recently described Trump as a “snake-oil salesman,” who despite four years in the White House never fulfilled his 2016 campaign promise to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexican border.

And that is just the start.

Going on shows inside a conservative echo-chamber that is still dominated by Trump, Christie made three damning points. First, he pointed out that Trump added trillions to the national debt while in office. Second, he pointed out that Trump failed to reform ObamaCare after years of claiming he had a better plan. Third, he argues that Trump is again making empty promises by telling Republicans he will bring a quick end to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“The only way he could do that is do what he normally does, which is bend down to Vladimir Putin and get him whatever he wants,” Christie said.

Then there is the personal vendetta.

Christie publicly blames Trump for giving him COVID. Christie had to be hospitalized. He said Trump had tested positive before preparations for the 2020 presidential debate but hid the truth.

Even when asked if he is willing to literally fight with Trump, in a UFC octagon, Christie still refused to back away, to dismiss it as schoolyard bluster.

Instead, he said flat out: “Guy is 78 years old. I’d kick his ass.”

In response to Christie’s tough talk, Trump went on social media to mock Christie’s weight and call him a “TOTAL LOSER.”

Despite the all caps, Christie did not back down.

“Donny, you got so much to say, why don’t you say it directly to my face on the debate stage?” Christie tweeted. “Or are you a coward?”

“He should be on that stage,” Christie told Newsmax’s Eric Bolling, “because he owes it to the Republican Party voters to get on the stage, defend his record and talk about his vision for the future. Is he scared to get on the stage?”

Christie’s willingness to tangle with Trump does not make him the most likely candidate to benefit if Trump falls.

At the moment, Christie has the lowest net favorability among GOP voters of any of the declared presidential candidates — negative 24 points, according to a June poll from The Economist and YouGov.

He got only 2 percent support nationwide in a June poll by Emerson College. In New Hampshire, the first primary state for the GOP, Christie is running a distant third. With 9 percent support, he trails Trump and DeSantis in a New Hampshire Journal poll.

That leads to questions about whether Christie is only running to “take out,” Trump. But Christie likes to point out that the race is just starting, still months away from January’s Iowa caucuses. He could still gain traction with voters as a fiery conservative, given his record as a tax-cutting former governor.

And he frequently reminds voters that Trump was not the top candidate for the 2016 nomination when that race was getting started.

Also, the candidate running second to Trump in the early polls, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.), looks weak on the national stage as he leads a campaign that is going backwards in the polls.

Other top tier candidates, such as former Vice President Mike Pence and Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) are not breaking out either.

In the 2016 campaign, Trump’s rivals made the mistake of not directly challenging Trump when he tagged them with insulting nicknames. They never found an effective response when he belittled Carly Fiorina’s looks or when he went after Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) by trashing his father and his wife.

In that race, Trump turned the debates into a television show and made himself the star.

Now Christie wants to flip the script and make himself the star of the debate stage by turning Trump into the punching bag.

He is betting that if he makes his case against Trump to Trump’s face and in front of a national audience, it will cause GOP primary voters to change their minds and snap out of their seven-year trance under Trump’s spell.

Who doesn’t love a good debate?

For that reason, I say “Go, Christie, Go!” Show some political backbone and fight like you have nothing to lose.

Juan Williams is an author and a political analyst for Fox News Channel.