Chris Christie, of all people, has no business claiming Trump’s character disqualifies him for the presidency
David Freddoso
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Former Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ) was the very first Republican politician to drop out of the 2016 presidential race and back Donald Trump.
Christie had already by then fallen out of favor with most conservatives for his embrace of President Barack Obama at the very end of the 2012 presidential election. But at the time, I felt that this betrayal of the Republicanism of his era (if you want to call it that) was far more profound. Trump, after all, had already lost the Iowa caucuses. Yes, he had won in New Hampshire, but he was just too strange. Many conservatives did not believe he could win the nomination and hoped he would not.
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So Christie wasn’t just one of those Republicans who went along because Trump’s nomination was inevitable. Nor was he one of those who backed Trump just as a loyal party man. No, Christie really did go out on a limb for Trump. And he did it knowing what sort of person he was.
Christie’s endorsement actually meant something at that time. Afterward, others felt permission to follow with their own Trump endorsements, one after another.
With this context in mind, I find Christie’s comments on Tuesday about Trump’s character to be utterly ridiculous.
“You have someone who has had an affair with a porn star, paid her off $130,000 to cover it up, to keep that information from the American people while he’s seeking the highest office in the land,” Christie reportedly said. “That’s not the character of somebody who I think should be president of the United States.”
In fairness to Christie, the payment to Stormy Daniels over the alleged affair didn’t occur until several months later. But Christie knew exactly what kind of character Trump had when he endorsed him for president, because Trump’s promiscuity was legendary by that point.
Consider: Trump had cheated on his first wife ostentatiously with the woman who later became his second wife. And his then-mistress’s supposed claim that this affair was “the best sex I ever had” (she now denies ever saying it) was not overheard in some dark corner, but plastered on the front page of the New York Post, probably at Trump’s prompting. Also, Trump not only actively promoted this story about his own infidelity, but additionally spread the rumor that he was actually seeing three other women on the side!
None of this could possibly come as a surprise to Christie, who was born and raised in New Jersey and won his first political office there in 1995.
Christie is right about Trump’s character. And he is the last person on Earth (or perhaps second-to-last after Rudy Giuliani) who has any business talking about it. Why is he objecting only now, after putting everything on the line, risking (and arguably losing) his political career, to make this man president in the first place?