Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie said Sunday that fellow 2024 GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump is a “petulant kid” when it comes to those, especially his former allies, who are not agree with him.
The indicted former president recently took to his Truth Social platform to rip apart former staff and allies who criticized him for knowingly keeping classified documents at Mar-a-Lago after he left the White House and attempted to prevent the National Archives from obtaining these documents. . Trump has pleaded not guilty to all charges – some of which fall under the Espionage Act – brought by a federal grand jury.
Among those he sued were former White House chief of staff John Kelly and former attorney general Bill Barr, both of whom recently criticized Trump for mishandling top-secret government documents. In an article, the ex-president said Kelly was weak and had a “very small brain”. In another post, Trump called Barr a “gutless pig,” “lazy,” and “totally ineffective.”
Speaking on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Christie pointed out that the very people Trump berates are the same public servants he praised when he hired them during his presidency.
“Now listen, either Donald Trump ― if you believe what he said when [the officials] left ― it means he hasn’t chosen the best people and he doesn’t know how to choose the staff. If you believe, about them, what he said at the beginning, the good things, then this guy is the worst manager in the history of the American presidency,” the presidential candidate said.
“Anyway, Republicans should listen to what he says. He’s a testy kid when someone disagrees with him. And whether it’s Bill Barr or John Kelly or [former Defense Secretary] General [James] Mattis, whatever [former White House official] Mick Mulvaney or if it’s… [Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff] General [Mark] Milley ― if you disagree with Donald Trump, the petulant kid comes out and he calls you names like the ones you just mentioned and the ones I mentioned.
Christie was one of more than a dozen Republicans vying for the presidential nomination in 2016, and after giving up, he became Trump’s first major endorser. The New Jersey Republican supported Trump through all of his White House controversies, even after the former president infected him with COVID-19 during a debate prep session in 2020. As a result, Christie has spent a week in intensive care in the hospital.
The former New Jersey governor withdrew his support for Trump after the ex-president lied about voter fraud in the 2020 election and incited a crowd of supporters to attack the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Christie , who is now running for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, was one of Trump’s first GOP rivals to sue him for special counsel from the Justice Department, charging him with 37 counts related to the classified documents.
The Republican National Committee announced this year that all GOP candidates must sign a pledge to support the prospective candidate in order to participate in primary debates, whether or not the candidate is a convicted felon. When asked if he would support Trump if he was the nominee, Christie called the idea of a pledge “unnecessary.”
“I will take the pledge as seriously as Donald Trump took it in 2016. As you will recall, [former RNC chair] Reince Priebus had to go up to Trump Tower to get him to sign [the pledge], asking him to do so. He did,” the New Jersey Republican said.
“And then we went to a later debate, and we were all asked if we would reaffirm our support for whoever the candidate was by raising our hands. There were 10 of us on stage ― nine of us raised our hands. The one who didn’t is Donald Trump. And so I will take the commitment in 2024 just as seriously as Donald Trump took it in 2016.”