Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie boasted that he’s living “rent-free” inside Donald Trump’s head after the former president launched another attack on him.
Trump on Tuesday fired off a rant on his Truth Social website saying Christie “SHOULD DROP OUT OF THE RACE.”
Christie, one of a number of candidates running against Trump for the Republican presidential nomination, said that won’t happen.
“He only wishes I was going away,” Christie said, saying Trump was “obviously” watching as he criticised the former president on TV when he posted that message.
“I was laying out the truth about him,” Christie said, saying the “one thing he cannot stand” is when someone credible calls him out.
“He knows I’m not just some politician talking about his problems. I’m someone who’s done it, and done it well,” Christie said, noting his 130 wins and zero losses in prosecuting political corruption cases when he was a U.S. attorney.
“I know how deep his problems are, and how much they’re damaging both the Republican Party and the country,” Christie said. “I’m not getting out this race. Maybe he should think about getting out of the race since he’ll be spending most of March and half of April in a courtroom in Washington, DC.”
That’s a reference to the March 4 start of Trump’s election interference trial, one of four criminal cases against the former president.
Christie is polling in the low-to-mid single digits, far behind Trump and behind a number of other candidates such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, political newcomer Vivek Ramaswamy and former United States Ambassador Nikki Haley.
Yet the former president seems to devote outsized attention to Christie, frequently responding to his TV appearances by attacking him on social media despite the fact that the two were once close allies.
In 2016, Christie became one of the first prominent Republicans to endorse Trump, and remained a loyal insider for the duration of Trump’s presidency, but turned into a critic afterward.
See his full conversation with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins below: