Chris Christie says he will take loyalty pledge as seriously as Trump did in 2016
Jack Birle
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Republican 2024 presidential candidate Chris Christie says he will take the GOP’s pledge to support whoever the 2024 nominee is as seriously as former President Donald Trump did in 2016.
Christie discussed how despite signing the pledge to get on the debate stage, Trump was still entertaining the idea of not supporting the nominee depending on who it was in 2016, while speaking on CNN’s State of the Union.
BIDEN DRILLS DOWN ON FIVE KEY TOPICS AS HE BEGINS HIS FINAL CAMPAIGN
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“As you’ll remember, Reince Priebus had to go up to Trump Tower to get him to sign it, to ask him to do so. He did, and then we went to a subsequent debate, and we were all asked if we would reaffirm our support of whoever the nominee was going to be by raising our hand. There were 10 of us on the stage; nine of us raised our hands. The one who didn’t was Donald Trump. And so I’ll take the pledge in 2024 just as seriously as Donald Trump took the pledge in 2016,” Christie said.
He also claimed that he has told Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel that he believes a signed pledge is “useless.”
“All my life, we never had to have Republican primary candidates take a pledge. You know, we were Republicans. And the idea is you support the Republican whether you won or lost. And you didn’t have to ask somebody to sign something. It’s only in the era of Donald Trump that you need somebody to sign something on a pledge. So I think it’s a bad idea. I’ve expressed that to Ronna Romney McDaniel personally, directly. This is not the first time she’s hearing it,” Christie said.
Christie also blamed Trump for the party’s losses in the 2022 midterm elections, calling the former president a “three-time loser.”
“I will do what I need to do, to be up on that stage and save my party and country from going down the road of being led by three-time loser Donald Trump,” said Christie. “Loser in 2018 by losing the House; Loser in 2020 by losing the White House, and the United States Senate, and the worst midterm performance we’ve seen in a long long time led by Donald Trump-selected candidates, with Donald Trump as the main issue in most of those races. Loser, loser, loser,” he continued.
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Trump has a significant lead over the GOP field, per polling data, but some recent polls at the national and state level show the former president’s lead may be slipping.
Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) is in second place, while former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, former Vice President Mike Pence, and the rest of the field remain far behind the two Florida men, per the RealClearPolitics polling average.