Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who is running for the Republican presidential nomination, hit back at rival Donald Trump during a Newsmax interview on Thursday evening.
Trump on Wednesday made a number of wild claims during his own interview with the network’s Eric Bolling, and he repeated his insistence that he could end the war between Russia and Ukraine in 24 hours.
“He’s completely full of it,” Christie told Bolling. He then offered a more direct example from Trump’s own recent history.
“The same way he built the wall all across the border of Mexico. In his first four years, he built 52 miles of new wall,” Christie pointed out. “And the same way Mexico was going to pay for it. They haven’t paid a peso towards it yet. This is another of these Donald Trump’s fabrications.”
Christie said if Trump did “solve” the war, it would be by giving Russian President Vladimir Putin control of the situation.
Getting back to the wall, Christie said Trump’s pace would take 110 years to build a wall across the nearly 2,000-mile border.
Bolling pointed to the 2020 pandemic as a reason why there was slow progress on the wall. But Christie wasn’t buying it.
“Come on, Eric,” he said. “Eric, stop with the excuses for him, please. Please.”
Christie pointed out that the pandemic hit in the final year of the Trump presidency.
“So that means in three years he got 14 miles of wall done, 15 miles of wall done a year,” he said. “Congratulations. You know, at that pace he’s going to have to have over a hundred years as president to get it done, so can we stop making excuses for him?”
Christie added:
“He’s a big boy now, as much as he complains all the time about how much he’s picked on. Can we not have people making excuses for him on that utter failure? Especially from someone who’s whole career is about being a builder.”
See their full conversation below: